Benghazi II

Stewart nails 'em again:

The Daily Show

Here and There

• The Onion declares North Korea's Kim Jong-Un the Sexiest Man Alive in 2012, which is pretty funny, but not half as funny as The People's Daily, the Chinese Communist Party's official newspaper, reporting it as a legitimate story.

• Bruce Bartlett – a conservative veteran of the Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II administrations – describes how wacky the Republican Party has become. Not news to us here, of course. Last line: "When Republicans and conservatives once again start asking my opinion, I will know they are on the road to recovery." Can't count how many times I've said the same thing. Kidding aside, it's a good read.

•  Sen. Dick Durban, a fine gentleman, thinks we should have another Social Security commission, like the bipartisan Greenspan Commission in 1983, to point the way forward for Social Security. This could be a good idea if there are any Republicans left who haven't had a sip of Paul Ryan's Kool-Aid. Unfortunately, I have to put myself in the skeptical column about that.

• Kevin Drum suggests that Bill and Hillary get together and have a radio talk show. I'd sure tune it in.

Ross Douthat's Trojan Horses – Means Testing

Ross Douthat lays out the components of what he calls "sensible Social Security reform": shifting funding from a dedicated payroll tax to general revenues (the main push of his column), "means-testing for wealthier beneficiaries, changing the way benefits adjust for inflation, [and] a slow increase in the retirement age."

There are three very bad ideas here, and since the thrust of his article is that Social Security is an unbearable assault on the sensitivities of the conservative mind, one suspects that the one arguably good idea – changing the way benefits adjust for inflation – is just thrown in for show. [But maybe we should regard it with more suspicion!]

The three bad ideas may sound reasonable to people of good will (from whom Mr. Douthat is excluded, by the way), but problems become evident when we look at them more carefully. This post will address means-testing. You can't say you weren't warned.

Something similar to means-testing was part of Social Security from the very beginning. Social Security retirement benefits were regarded as "retirement insurance." Insurance does not pay you if you do not suffer a loss, and this retirement insurance was intended to replace some of the income "lost" through retirement. If you have not retired, this reasoning went, you have not suffered a loss. Thus, the original Social Security Act contained a provision that "Whenever the Board finds that any qualified individual has received wages with respect to regular employment after he attained the age of sixty-five, the old-age benefit payable to such individual shall be reduced, for each calendar month in any part of which such regular employment occurred, by an amount equal to one month's benefit."

This was called the monthly earnings test, and strictly speaking was not means-testing, of course, although by no coincidence most retiring persons suffered a diminished ability to pay their bills. A retiring wealthy person, however, was as entitled to receive his/her Social Security benefits as a retiring person with little or no savings. This was intentional in that it gave high wage earners a continuing stake in the program. After paying Social Security taxes during their work life, they are as entitled as the next man/woman to receive a retirement check, regardless of how successful they have been financially.  Social Security beneficiaries thus bear no stigma as welfare cases. Rather, their benefits are rightly regarded as "a reward for steady work," as Mr. Douthat contemptuously refers to them.

The monthly earnings test has changed over the years. Most recently, by a unanimous vote in both houses of Congress, it was eliminated in 2000 for persons who had reached "full retirement age" – traditionally age 65, but gradually working its way up to 67. Whether this was a great idea is arguable, but it was certainly popular with our Congressmen.

So despite the monthly earnings test Social Security is not a welfare program. It is a "social insurance" program created in the depths of the Depression by people who understood the vagaries of life all too well. Its benefits are a compact between generations. Means-testing Social Security would fundamentally change that. Means-test Social Security and you have just created a welfare program, the beneficiaries of which will be stigmatized. Your parents, for example.

You.

But there are other, very practical reasons to reject means-testing. For one, means-tested programs are several times more costly to administer than simple social insurance programs. Is it necessary to add that additional administrative expenses equate to less money available to be paid as benefits?

Consider this comparison of Social Security and Supplemental Security Income. You know what Social Security is. You may not know about Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a federal, means-tested program for the aged and disabled. Although the benefits and administrative expenses of SSI are not paid from Social Security trust funds, both SSI and Social Security are administered by the same agency. To apply for SSI, you go to a Social Security Office. The manager of the Social Security Office is also the manager of the SSI program administered by that office. At the level we're talking from, there is no essential difference.

Now consider this: the cost of administering the non-means-tested Social Security program in 2009 was 0.9% of total expenditures, while the cost of administering the means-tested SSI program in the same year was 7% – nearly 8 times higher!

Another problem with means-tested programs is that, because people's economic circumstances often change, they have much higher payment error rates.  Compare the 2011 Social Security payment error rate of 0.6% with the SSI payment error rate of 9.1%.

Between the additional administrative expenses and the higher payment error rate, we have just reduced by 15% the trust funds available for payments to the taxpayers. A great idea this isn't.

Of course, Mr. Douthat would be pleased with this arrangement because he is a person with a "philosophy," and his philosophy dictates that regardless of whether Social Security works (an apparently immaterial concept) it is undesirable because it is government doing things for people they should be doing for themselves. Means-testing Social Security is just a step toward stopping the government from doing that.

Like it all worked so well before Social Security.

Social Security is not in dire trouble. Modest changes will put it back in actuarial balance for the next 75 years. In fact, you can do it yourself here.

Coming up, more Trojan horses: funding from general revenues and another increase in the retirement age.

Benghazi

If you've suspected that the impetus for the Benghazi uproar was a desire to damage President Obama, your suspicions have been confirmed by now. Benghazi was about a courageous American diplomat who took risks with his own safety in the service of his country.

Joe Klein asks, "[W]hat sort of risks should we ask our diplomats to take? It is a question that hits very close to home for me since, as some of you may know, I’m the father of an American diplomat who has served in difficult places, including a year in Baghdad."

It is also the sort of question that John McCain might have asked back in the days when he was an honorable public servant. But he’s now a political caricature, severely debilitated by anger and envy. His trigger-happy foreign policy beliefs have always been questionable, but this Benghazi crusade has put [him] in the weird circle inhabited by nutcases and conspiracy theorists like Michele Bachmann and Allen West. He should honor the memory of those who lost their lives that terrible night by putting a cork in his disgraceful behavior immediately.

Instructions for Thanksgiving

Via Dave, here come Margaret and Helen, with a thanksgiving letter for the family. A sampling:

Dinner is at 2:00.   Not 2:15.  Not 2:05.   Two.  Arrive late and you get what’s leftover.

Last year, that moron Marshall fried a turkey in one of those contraptions and practically burned the deck off the house.  This year, the only peanut oil used to make the meal will be from the secret scoop of peanut butter I add to the carrot soup.

Jonathan, your last new wife was an idiot.  You don’t arrive at someone’s house on Thanksgiving needing to use the oven and the stove.  Honest to God I thought you might have learned after two wives – date them longer and save us all the agony of another divorce.

Now, the house rules are slightly different this year because I have decided that 47% of you don’t know how to take care of nice things.  Paper plates and red Solo cups might be bad for the environment, but I’ll be gone soon and that will be your problem to deal with.

 Then, scroll down to read about Helen's visit to Fox News. Hilarious.

Okay, So Maybe Not BIG News ...

Looks like NASA is walking back the enthusiasm about what the Martian Rover Curiosity is turning up.  Scientists will probably be excited. You and me? Meh.

In Humor There Is Truth

Onion lampoons TED Talks and social media.

What Gets Scientists Excited?

Some BIG NEWS is going to be coming out of the Mars rover soon. At least one scientist is bursting at the seams to tell us all about it:

"This data is gonna be one for the history books. It's looking really good."

Scientists are wonderful people as a group, but they tend to get excited if nitrogen measurements are 1/2 percent more than expected. We'll see.

But I suspect the news is not that they've found Lucy's missing teeth.

Required Reading

This post by Steve Benen should be required reading for all Progressives.

 A taste:

Lefties outside the South seem to think very little of suggesting the red states just get out. For kicks, I spent some time this weekend subtracting ballots for Barack Obama in the red states from the president's margin of victory in the national popular vote.

You could do this any number of ways, but if you take out just Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, my own Mississippi and Georgia, the president loses the popular vote. Georgia alone added 1,761,761 votes for Obama. And yes, I realize those same states contributed enough red votes to keep the election close. But every blue ballot represents a natural ally for lefties outside the South, not votes to be thrown out.

What's more, progressives in conservative states are making a new and quite game go of it. 

Odds and Ends

• If you never saw Brian Williams' put-down of Donald Trump on election night, you missed evidence that the mainstream media are starting to take their jobs seriously again.

• Another bit of evidence is this: Noting that John McCain held a press conference to whine and make insinuations about not getting information about the Benghazi attack, at the exact same time he should have been attending a confidential briefing on the very subject, a CNN producer had the temerity to ask him about it. It wasn't pretty.

• Read the fascinating back-story to the famous Lee Atwater interview, in which he explained how the Southern Strategy morphed "nigger, nigger, nigger," into cutting taxes.

• From the Washington Post:
  

  Things just got a whole lot worse for Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.).
  According to a new report from the Chattanooga Times Free Press the congressman, who is also a doctor, admitted to sexual relationships with multiple patients and co-workers during sworn testimony at his divorce trial and urged his now-ex-wife to get two abortions, despite campaigning for Congress as an antiabortion rights, family values candidate. 

  
  

GOP Frontrunner for 2016

Apparently a front-runner has already emerged for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016: a shrieking white-hot sphere of pure rage.

Jon Stewart on Petraeus

Does Fox ever get tired of looking ridiculous?

Apparently not.

For Nate Silver Fans Only

Stumbled upon this.

The Romney Family Gets Over It

From Saturday Night Live:

Still Haven't Had Enough?

Haven't had enough of feeling good about the election?

Watch Rachel!!

Addendum:  Actually, I posted the above before watching the whole thing. She ends with an appeal to Republicans that makes this a MUST SEE VIDEO.

She's absolutely right: only one side is working on the hard stuff.

A New Idea

"Immense salaries are paid to [corporation] officers; transactions are consummated by which the directors make money while the rank and file among the stockholders lose it; the honest investor waits for dividends and the directors grow rich. It is suspected, too, that large sums are spent under various disguises in efforts to influence legislation."

– Grover Cleveland 1883

Best Comment So Far

"I love the smell of schadenfreude in the morning."

from TPM Commenter jsfox on TalkingPointsMemo.

My New Neighbors

There was so much good news last night that I feel ungrateful for wishing the House had gone Democratic. But this morning's news that Congressmen Joe Walsh (IL) and Allen West (FL) had been returned to Oblivion sure took the sting out of that.

Welcome to the neighborhood, guys!

The Election

First, congratulations to Dave, who counts electoral votes as closely as Nate Silver. Dave said it would be over early. He was right.

I, on the other hand, had a last minute failure of nerve. "In my gut" I thought the polls were too close, that something was going to go wrong. I've never been so happy to be wrong.

Russ Douthat, who is the most conservative of the NY Times columnists, sees what happened:

"The age of Reagan is officially over, and the Obama majority is the only majority we have."

Yay!

More Crackpot Stuff

... in this case, unfortunately, the U.S. Constitution. What happens if there's a tie in the Electoral College?