President of Fabricated Crises (WaPo's Meyerson on Bush SS lies)

[papau]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2304-2005Jan11.html

President of Fabricated Crises

By Harold Meyerson
Wednesday, January 12, 2005; Page A21

Some presidents make the history books by managing crises. Lincoln had Fort Sumter, Roosevelt had the Depression and Pearl Harbor, and Kennedy had the missiles in Cuba. George W. Bush, of course, had Sept. 11, and for a while thereafter -- through the overthrow of the Taliban -- he earned his page in history, too.

But when historians look back at the Bush presidency, they're more likely to note that what sets Bush apart is not the crises he managed but the crises he fabricated. The fabricated crisis is the hallmark of the Bush presidency. To attain goals that he had set for himself before he took office -- the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the privatization of Social Security -- he concocted crises where there were none.

So Iraq became a clear and present danger to American hearths and homes, bristling with weapons of mass destruction, a nuclear attack just waiting to happen. And now, this week, the president is embarking on his second great scare campaign, this one to convince the American people that Social Security will collapse and that the only remedy is to cut benefits and redirect resources into private accounts.

In fact, Social Security is on a sounder footing now than it has been for most of its 70-year history. Without altering any of its particulars, its trustees say, it can pay full benefits straight through 2042. Over the next 75 years its shortfall will amount to just 0.7 percent of national income, according to the trustees, or 0.4 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That still amounts to a real chunk of change, but it pales alongside the 75-year cost of Bush's Medicare drug benefit, which is more than twice its size, or Bush's tax cuts if permanently extended, which would be nearly four times its size.

In short, Social Security is not facing a financial crisis at all. It is facing a need for some distinctly sub-cataclysmic adjustments over the next few decades that would increase its revenue and diminish its benefits. <snip>

[RobertSeattle]

1. Excellent piece - thanks

Bust Strategery 101

1. Create a phony crisis, masking the real right wing agenda.

2. Through your administration officials and talking heads, get the public to perceive the phony crisis as a crisis

3 Propose a equally phony solution, not solving any real crisis, just achieving the hidden Administration agenda.

4. Through your administration officials and talking heads, market the solution and denounce and villify anyone who disagrees as partisan, immoral, un-American, and/or unpatriotic.

5. Execute the solution using exceedingly loyal, regardless of competency, partisans.

6. Regardless of the results, declare the solution a success. Never admit any mistakes.

[HockeyMom]

5. Hitler

woould be PROUD.

[BrainRants]

2. Sounds like a catchy title that could stick! n/t

[Goldeneye]

3. WaPo?

With WaPo puting out articles like this, its gonna get icky for the would be SS reformers...lets hope people are seeing these articles.

[pansypoo53219]

4. the crisis

is as immenent as the WMD that sadaam had.

[Demeter]

6. Bush IS the Crisis

He isn't part of the solution, that's for sure.

[papau]

7. Amen to that comment! :-)

:-)