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Archive for the 'Human Services' Category

Tax Revolt as Policy Battle

Responding to a heated discussion at Blue Mass Group, Charley has a great post about the Free Lunch mentality among many of the gubernatorial candidates:
Let’s just remember that when you pay taxes, you’re buying something. Maybe you’re getting well-built roads and honest cops and judges and good schools and a safe country; and maybe you’re […]

Privatizers’ selective assumptions

Great op-ed by Paul Krugman today pointing out that economic assumptions the privatize Social Security use in forecasting doom and crisis are at odds with the economic assumptions they use to project high returns from the equities market. The argument has been circulating by others for a while, but it’s put well here and in […]

Social Security as Debt Crisis

Josh Marshall has been weighing in on the proposed Social Security reform, noting that “to the extent that we have a problem, it is not a Social Security problem, but an accumulated national debt problem.”
After 1980 we started borrowing money big-time to finance our deficits…So where’d we borrow the money? …about $4 trillion of […]

Opposition Strategy

I agreed with Josh Marshall a month ago, when he wrote that the Democrats have to strategize along the lines of a parliamentary opposition party, but it seems especially important advice now that Social Security battles are coming up:
One thing that Democrats must understand is that they cannot win this battle legislatively. At one […]

HRC and Social Security

To follow up on my post yesterday, I see that HRC has a press release up countering the New York Times’ claim that the organization is considering supporting privatization as part of a political barter and larger moderation strategy. HRC responds,
For example, regarding Social Security, the Congress will be considering Social Security reform. The debates […]

Social Security

Kevin Drum has an excellent, pithy post up on Social Security and conservative’s attempt to explain away the costs (approx. $2 trillion) that it would take to shift from our current system to privatized accounts.
Despite the best efforts of conservatives to scare everyone under 30 into thinking that Social Security is doomed, it’s actually […]