I wrote this is response to an article published in the Philly Inquirer's editorial section on 3-27-05 regarding how the Democrats are in denial on Social Security but the topic of Halliburton is just as maddening.
the article is found at:
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/11238457.htmmy response was:
Well, as President Reagan used to say, there you go again.
How can you, in good conscience, castigate the Democrats for lacking a Social Security plan while acknowledging that the president, with a majority in both houses of Congress, has advanced only the vaguest of principles with no mention of their costs? I don't mean you, personally, but the article appeared on the Editorial page. How can you allow him to be 'coy' about benefit cuts? How can you talk about Social Security at all without mentioning every time that funds which were and should be added to a 'trust fund' are now used in the general budget?
How can you mention the budget at all without mentioning every time that the costs of the "war" in Iraq and other items are not included?
Now Republicans are angry because Democrats won't tell them how to 'fix' things. This reads like a poorly-written takeoff of an Ayn Rand idea in which Those-who-don't-know and Those-who-can't constantly implore Those-who-do-know and Those-who-can to 'fix it!', whining, "It worked when you were in charge! Now make it work."
The party in charge of the executive, legislative and, apparently, the judicial branches of our government is doing this this way in the face of their own 'politics of pull', cronyism and nepotism. Who besides Halliburton gets a profit-guaranteed, ten-year, worldwide, exclusive contract? It all has such an Ayn Rand-like quality to such a degree that an eerie sense of deja vu pervades.
My point is that because important details, which may have been mentioned briefly, elsewhere, are absent during the storm of misinforming articles, such misinformation continues to propagate.
Perhaps you could tell me: Are articles, ideas or points of view with a pro-administration slant pushed during your editorial board discussions? If not, regarding Social Security, given a Republican president and a Republican majority in both houses of Congress how can it assert that the Democrats are in denial? If the article’s point is that the Democrats are not addressing Medicare or that the Inquirer is recommending its five-point plan for Social Security, shouldn't it be addressing the majority party?
I would ask that the Social Security discussion not be 'broadened'. Broadening discussions has not served the country well recently. We 'broadened' the power transmission debate into an energy policy debate which bogged down trying to decide how Republican-supporting companies could best loot the national treasury. We broadened the war on terror in to include Iraq in what I consider to be an egregiously terrible use of public lives and public money for private profit.
No, no more broadening for me. Let's talk Social Security, Iraq and the budget. Let's talk clearly. And let's clearly understand who is in denial.
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