Dispatches is up, on the financial reform bill that is not really financial reform.
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Runner’s diary, Thursday
It was a bit chilly on the run this morning — and now I know why. The sun has given way to clouds and it is now misting. So I guess I was lucky to get my three, very slow, miles in this morning.
Go me!
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- Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
From Greek tragedy to painful reality
The story of Dwight Gooden has gone from sad and tragic to just painful and absurd. The former ace — for a two- or three-year period, he was the best there was — snorted away his great talent, spent several years as a journeyman pitcher before leaving the game and spending time in jail.
He was arrested yesterday on DUI charges, with his kid in the car.
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- Read poetry at The Subterranean.
- Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Social Security in the sights
The latest in a long line of reports targeting Social Security, making a small problem seem much larger than it is, was issued today.
This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, said that while the Congressional projection would probably be borne out, the change would have no effect on benefits in 2010 and retirees would keep receiving their checks as usual.
The problem, he said, is that payments have risen more than expected during the downturn, because jobs disappeared and people applied for benefits sooner than they had planned. At the same time, the program’s revenue has fallen sharply, because there are fewer paychecks to tax.
That is bound to happen, especially when the economy collapses, but it is not a fatal flaw in the program — despite what conservatives may want us to believe. There are issues that need to be addressed — the retiree bubble, for instance, or that stretch of time when there will be more people taking money out than putting it in — but the fixes are not drastic. We could lift the ceiling on paying into the system, one that would add a needed level of progressivity to the system.
As for this story, can we get someone other than Alan Greenspan — whose opinions should have been discredited by the economic collapse and who is a longtime supporter of privatization — to comment on Social Security’s longterm viability?
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- Read poetry at The Subterranean.
- Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
Statehouse ideologues on the march
Come on, governor. Don’t be ridiculous. The healthcare bill is not a good one — it fall too far short of universal coverage and leaves the for-profit insurance industry in place — but it is constitutional, and a challenge on these grounds is pure ideological hubris.
- Send me an e-mail.
- Read poetry at The Subterranean.
- Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.
