Tag: messaging

Newsflash: Democrats Help Conservatives

George Lakoff represents:

Democrats help conservatives when they function as policy wonks – talking policy without communicating the moral values behind the policies. They help conservatives when they neglect to remind us that pensions are deferred payments for work done. “Benefits” are pay for work, not a handout. Pensions and benefits are arranged by contract. If there is not enough money for them, it is because the contracted funds have been taken by conservative officials and given to wealthy people and corporations instead of to the people who have earned them.

Yep. This is the neutron bomb of the pension debate, and The Democrat never, ever deigns to pick it up and use it. There is simply no rational defense within the “true conservative” worldview for the elimination of pensions. And yet we see that trotted forward as a “serious person” position over and over and over again. It is, in fact, the utter failure of the market to regulate itself.
Two parties willingly entered a contract; one party decided not to live up to their end, systematically and with malice aforethought underfunding the pensions to make quarterlies look better or election-year budgets seem sounder than they were; now the other party, the one that did their part and often took cuts in other areas specifically in exchange for better retirement packages, is simply told to suck it while the latter party sops up even more of the money the two had agreed to divide in some way. This is inherently and indisputably a failure of the market principle, enabled by GOP and to the sole benefit of the very same plutocrats who put us in this ditch to begin with. It’s no coincidence that Wall Street is earning a ridiculously high 15% vig on the management of the very pension fund that’s in trouble in WI. What a surprise. By making these tough cuts, I’m sure we can get that right up to 20%, though…here boys, take some tax credits and corporate welfare handouts.

And what’s most disturbing of all: this is emerging as the fundamental shape of the Social Security debate.

Newsflash: Democrats Help Conservatives

Ezra Explains Wisconsin

The best way to understand Walker’s proposal is as a multi-part attack on the state’s labor unions. In part one, their ability to bargain benefits for their members is reduced. In part two, their ability to collect dues, and thus spend money organizing members or lobbying the legislature, is undercut. And in part three, workers have to vote the union back into existence every single year. Put it all together and it looks like this: Wisconsin’s unions can’t deliver value to their members, they’re deprived of the resources to change the rules so they can start delivering value to their members again, and because of that, their members eventually give in to employer pressure and shut the union down in one of the annual certification elections.

What is it with this glut of cogent explanations in the media today? More, please. After all, something has to offset the emerging right-wing and MSM meme that this is primarily about budget cuts and that’s why Democrats have gone missing…

Ezra Explains Wisconsin

Social Security

The size of that fix [required to keep Social Security fully funded] is significant, but not astonishing. Over the next 75 years, the shortfall will be equal to about 0.7 percent of gross domestic product. How much is 0.7 percent of GDP? To put that in perspective, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that it’s about as much as George W. Bush’s tax cuts for the rich will cost over the same period. Saying we can afford those cuts – which is the consensus Republican position – but not Social Security’s outlay is nonsensical. Coming up with 0.7 percent of GDP isn’t a crisis. It’s a question of priorities.

And this is precisely how it should be talked about every single time a microphone is turned on. Clear, simple terms that highlight the basic stability of the program, the relative ease of fixing it (as opposed to, say, Medicare), and its critical position as the only thing between catfood and dying in the streets for millions of elderly individuals who have by and large paid into it, fair and square. Oh, but now your deal has to change and you have to keep working at your labors until you’re 70. Just makes perfect sense.

The parallels to Wisconsin are striking: A group and the government enter into a deal. Now the government wants to change the deal ex post facto, and uses a bludgeon of “dread Unions” to paper over the fact that they the government are the one dealing in underhanded fashion. And, of course, the media blissfully reports it from the government perspective. This is why we fail.

But, if a few million folks show up on the doorstep of said government, well, things can change.

Social Security

And this is precisely why the Senate should have no other business until the debt ceiling vote. Alright, who wants to vote against the liver? Anyone against the liver? Next, the kidney. One or a pair? How about one lung, one kidney? Can we agree on that civilly?

Ezra Klein points out what should be obvious, that all the folks screaming about deficit implications and the Affordable Care Act are, in fact, screaming about positive deficit implications (see: PPACA and red column) and, even if we simply take it on costs alone (as separate from any deficit impact), the ACA amounts to a rounding error when compared to the GOP’s tax proposals.

But it is best not speak of any of this. Ever.

Those Liberals at the AP

The far-left journalists over at the AP make the hard calls and reports that there is trouble at the mill, everyone:

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday waded into waters in which past British governments have foundered, promising fundamental changes to the country’s expensive and over-stressed public health care system.

I see. Crazy expensive socialist medical care. Only Lord Jesus can Know how much that stuff costs. Or, you can throw your lot in with pointy-headed statisticians and find out that it costs about $2317 per capita for the UK to provide universal, essentially free care to everyone (free as in beer, it is obviously paid for through various taxes and etc…). The US? We pay $5711 per capita. More than twice as much.
Now, of course, that would all change if we look at percent GDP, right? The US is such a giant economy and all. Actually, no. The US spends ~15% of GDP on healthcare, UK: ~8%. So it’s roughly half as expensive, whether considered as a function of the overall economy or strictly in terms of what’s spent per individual. And but so they all get access to healthcare. In the US, well, the GOP assures us that the market will take care of that any minute now.

Now we come to “over-stressed,” which must mean that outcomes are terrible in Britain when compared to the US, which (as we’re told repeatedly) has the finest care anywhere. They must be choking the streets with bodies over there if they spend half as much and then funnel that through some socialistic nightmare of a healthcare bureaucracy. Not so much: turns out they live longer, have lower infant mortality, and, of course, have universal access to free-as-in-beer healthcare 24/7, all without having to use the ER as their primary care physician or being told to just go die in the streets already. In fact, we typically rank in the low end of developed nations, not even within spitting distance of dread France, and always well behind the UK.

So, AP wrong on “expensive,” wrong on “over-stressed.” But they did get the current PM’s name right (though notably not his party affiliation; can’t go around limning the word “conservative” with “fundamental changes” and “foundered,” now can we?). So there’s that.

Another several of the big lies laid out by a single table. Last I checked, 590+-610=-20. This is something I learned in Two Minus Three Equals Negative Fun starring Troy McClure, which did have a decidedly liberal math bias now that I think back…

Full document available if you click. Note to Democrats: print out, laminate, and refer to often.

Job Killing vs. Actual Killing

Steven Pearlstein writes about the GOP’s latest tick: adding “job-killing” to the front of basically any Democrat-related noun. He finds just one teensy problem with the practice:

Repealing health-care reform, for instance, would inevitably lead to thousands of unnecessary deaths each year because of an inability to get medical care.

Although lack of effective regulation led directly to the deaths of 78 coal miners last year in West Virginia, Republicans continue to insist that any reform of mine safety laws is bad for miners’ employment.

Republicans also continue to oppose food safety legislation that could save the lives of hundreds of Americans killed each year by contaminated food, just as they oppose any regulation that would effectively keep assault weapons out of the hands of convicted criminals and narco-terrorists who kill thousands of innocent victims on both sides of the Rio Grande.

Indeed. Read the whole thing.

Job Killing vs. Actual Killing

“Fiscally responsible” is code for cutting taxes on rich people and gutting Social Security. Those are their goals, and that’s always been the case.

Duncan Black, simplifying it for you.
I’d only add that these same forces, and (of course) their media enablers, repeatedly include Social Security despite the fact that SS has its own funding source, is not in any imminent danger, and does not contribute to the deficit at all, nor will it for at least 45 years, even if we do nothing. But, by all means, it MUST BE DESTROYED by the end of the week or we all die. It’s the only possible conclusion for any serious person.