A Brief History of Social Security being called a Ponzi Scheme

The latest talking point between the left seems to be that calling Social Security a Ponzi Scheme is a new thing.

This proves to me that the left has the shortest memory of any creature on earth.


In 2007, Krugman, quoting others:
(Chris Matthews, & Russert)

Mr. Russert: “Everyone knows Social Security, as it’s constructed, is not going to be in the same place it’s going to be for the next generation, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives.”

Mr. Matthews: “It’s a bad Ponzi scheme, at this point.”

Mr. Russert: “Yes.”

From the American Thinker Magazine, 2005:

In the past several months as the debate over Social Security reform has taken center stage in the theater of the absurd that is modern American politics, the idea has been floated that the entire pay—as—you—go structure of this system closely resembles a Ponzi scheme, albeit one that is about to collapse.

Not far enough back for you?
In 2004, the Daily Howler blamed the phrase on earlier generations:
(quoting Ed Crane)

And so it goes in the offices of the Social Security Administration, home of the world's largest Ponzi scheme. Sold originally to the American public as a program to care for the indigent elderly, then as a "national pension plan" into which we pay "insurance premiums," Social Security has always been a fraud, a pay-as-you-go slush fund for politicians to dip into...

Geez. That's back in 1994!

The Cato Institute, in 1999:

Why is Social Security often called a Ponzi scheme?

If anyone tells you that this is something new, please copy and paste. Freely.

Oh Good. The president is going to do something about jobs. Again.

If a mechanic kept promising to repair your car, and kept messing it up, would you keep paying?

In 2009, Barack promised to create jobs and reduce the deficit, in an address to congress:

Now is the time to act boldly and wisely -- to not only revive this economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting prosperity. Now is the time to jumpstart job creation, re-start lending, and invest in areas like energy, health care, and education that will grow our economy, even as we make hard choices to bring our deficit down. That is what my economic agenda is designed to do, and that is what I'd like to talk to you about tonight.

Then he promised to attack jobs in 2010.

Now, as we stabilized the financial system, we also took steps to get our economy growing again, save as many jobs as possible, and help Americans who had become unemployed.

Wait... maybe we can get him saying that he won't rest until he gets us a job?

Oh.

Look, its 2011. We don't need more promises/ plans/ from the guy who spent $787 Billion and couldn't keep unemployment under the 8%.

At some point in time, do you stop listening to the mechanic who keeps promising to fix your car?

Or are you different?

Do you give your keys to the mechanic, again, pay again, and presume that this time... he's going to get it right?

Going back in time: What Obamanomics was supposed to do

I've mentioned before that sometimes I just use my blog to keep tract of links.

In this case, its because someone I know is trying to argue that Obamanomics is a term that Fox News uses.
Let me make this clear; they aren't arguing that Fox News is one of many places that uses Obamanomics. They are arguing that its mostly Fox that created the term, and uses it to bash the economic policies of Obama.

So let's go over who used the term in 2008. -And while we're at it, let's see what people predicted would happen under Obamanomics.

Of course, there was the uber-conservative Firedoglake:

Obama’s tax plan will put more of the burden on the rich, he will raise the minimum wage, make unionization easier and generally help workers. The effect won’t be large, but for the poorest workers and for unions, it will be noticeable.

In this disjointed article, the author suggests that the biggest problem with Obamanomics is that Obama wants to give money back to the people... which is... bad. The author argues that the people don't know how to spend their money right. Ooookay.

August 2008, Counterpunch uses the term. They talk about how Obama has spent time speaking about deficit (cough cough!) reduction:

Obama also embraces some elements of deficit reduction in his thinking. That’s not wrong in principle. Lower deficits can strengthen the value of the dollar, making imports less expensive. Lower federal budget deficits can make it harder to justify fiscal austerity that shrinks needed social welfare, training or public investments of various kinds. Government borrowing can crowd out private sector borrowing, making investments more costly.

Thank goodness that Barack isn't raising the deficit?

Then there was The Economist, who had to say this about the president's economics:

As the battle for the Democratic nomination reaches a climax in Texas and Ohio, the front-runner's speeches have begun to paint a world in which laid-off parents compete with their children for minimum-wage jobs while corporate fat-cats mis-sell dodgy mortgages and ship jobs off to Mexico.

To be fair, he hasn't changed that economic narrative.

Mark Green, from Air America, on the Huffington Post, referring to Krugman on Obamanomics:

Also, studies have shown that the GDP under Democratic presidents has been more than 300% higher than under Republican presidents. So whenever McCain falsely aserts that Obama will raise everyone's taxes or that he'll balance the budget by 2013 despite cutting revenues by several hundred billion annually, the affirmative answer is -- Democrats grow the economy far more than Republicans. 300% more. For the most recent example, contrast Clinton and Bush.

Whew. Then the economy is getting far better. Right. errr... right?
That's the problem with Democratic predictions. Its never their fault that things didn't turn out that way.

In These Times, on Obamanomics:

Obama would certainly shift government priorities to improving job prospects and raising living standards for American workers. He proposes raising the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour, offering refundable $4,000 tax credits for college, expanding the childcare tax credit, reforming bankruptcy laws, rebuilding infrastructure, establishing a new employee savings plan and investing in alternative energy to create “millions of new green jobs.”

Reminder; his economic policies were supposed to keep the unemployment rate under 8% too. But that's just window dressing.

Here is a completely laughable article by the economic writer for the New York Times, on what Obama is planning:

All of this raises the question of what will happen to the deficit. Obama’s aides optimistically insist he will reduce it, thanks to his tax increases on the affluent and his plan to wind down the Iraq war. Relative to McCain, whose promised spending cuts are extremely vague, Obama does indeed look like a fiscal conservative.

A fiscal conservative. Who raised the debt by $3.4 Trillion in 2 years. Here was the hint... in the same article:

“I still would have probably made a slightly different choice than Clinton did,” Obama said. “I probably wouldn’t have been as obsessed with deficit reduction.”

Uh, yeah.
Well, aren't we all glad that worked out so well?

More history on the term Teabaggers

Earlier, I wrote a brief history on the liberal's use of the word "Teabagger". Since the left has remained obsessed with it, I thought I'd update it.

This is, in part, what Salon wrote:

Truth be told, though, for the most part conservatives haven't actually been using the words in such a way as to lend themselves to double entendre. With one or two exceptions, almost all of it has actually been coming from the left, which seems to have adopted the joke en masse during an earlier round of these protests back in February. After many hours of investigative journalism -- the kind that makes you wish you'd just gone to law school instead -- I think I've traced the meme's birth back to February 27th, when blogs like Instaputz and Wonkette started using it independently of one another. They were inspired by a photo that the Washington Independent's David Weigel shot of one protester carrying a sign that was, if you knew that second meaning, pretty funny: "Tea bag the liberal Dems before they tea bag you !!" (sic).

Since then, the left has used it so often, that Oxford added it to their dictionary.
Here's how various lefty websites covered this event. The Huffington Post:

Keith Olbermann took credit for popularizing the word on MSNBC Tuesday night. But the word "teabagger" actually started to spread after the Washington Independent's David Weigel photographed a protester at the first D.C. Tea Party Protest in February holding the sign, "Tea Bag the Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You!!"

It actually wasn't Keith, but Rachel. Although you have to give Keith credit for copping to it.
What Mediaite wrote:

Their definition doesn’t touch upon any of the raunchier, more testicular connotations of the word, which Keith Olbermann and Anderson Cooper had a lot of fun with in April. Cooper can take a lot of credit for the popularization of the phrase: in response to David Gergen’s questions about the Republican Party’s abilities to organize and articulate a message, Cooper infamously quipped, “It’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging.”‘

And, just to make sure you can read the original Oxford posting, click on it for the details.

The rewriting of history: DOMA and DADT

I need to start by saying that I didn't know what the initials DADT stood for. But I ended up in an online discussion about the Defense Of Marriage Act (DOMA) when someone started to mention DADT; Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

You may have heard Bill Clinton say, recently, that he "didn't want" to pass don't ask, don't tell... but that he was forced to. He implied heavily that it was conservatives who made him do it. So lets start there.

Don't ask don't tell was passed into law in 1993. Since then, Obama has repeatedly said that he was going to repeal it. Let's go back in time.

1993 was the 102nd/103rd, congress in the house of representatives.
The 102nd congress was made up of 267 democrats and 167 republicans.
The 103rd congress was made up of 258 democrats and 176 republicans.
It would have been statistically impossible for Republicans to not only get a bill passed on their own, but steamroll it through.
The process started in the house, as the 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy was put into a congressional defense spending bill.

In the Senate, 22 members voted "No" on Don't ask, Don't tell. 18 of those members were Republicans. 4 senators who voted "No" were Democrats.

Here's the vote in the House for DOMA:
As expected, all but one Republican voted Yes.
Not expected? 118 Democrats voted yes, while only 65 voted no.

The next time someone tells you that Republicans made it impossible for the Democrats to oppose DOMA or DADT, please send them those links.