Cousin, I have heard several statements in the past few weeks linking the debacles on Wall Street and crimes by CEOnistas to campaign finance reform. We need to really change the way we finance our elections so that our politicians are able to work for our interests with clean hands, not one tied behind their backs and the other palm up for donations. Those little $1 checkmarks you can make on your tax form are the simplest beginning to that end. I'm told Maine is beginning to really practice public financing of campaigns, which means that young people without cartels of monied interests can run for office, that incumbents can wean themselves off those incessant chicken dinners and solicitation letters and the public will begin to see a change in how candidates address the issues because of how they are marketed and advertised (look for fewer TV ads, more public debates). Because of Big Money, candidates for office are "over managed"; they don't take risks, they lay low, they smile for the cameras and repeat the same old speech everywhere. Our President is an example of an over-managed Big Money candidate reinventing himself successfully. Now we are living with the consequences of not having a chance to know better, give or take a few chads and judges in black robes. And that's my polite version. - Karen Edmund Burke said over a century ago, all that's necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to say nothing. Samuel Johnson said, Where there is no hope, there can be no endeavor. Karen's corollary: Where there is no endeavor, there can be no hope.
Your wrote: This is one of the reasons that we need to revamp our election laws making them more equitible and send the Private Enterprisers to a class on morality, in spite of their constant protests about outright piracy. REH July 26, 2002 The Private Interest By PAUL KRUGMAN ince the early months of 2000, the Nasdaq has fallen about 75 percent, the broader S.&P. 500 more than 40 percent. These aren't mere paper losses; they translate into disappointment and even hardship for millions of Americans. Now more than ever we need institutions that provide a safety net for the middle class. Yet George W. Bush still wants to party like it's 1999. On Wednesday he insisted that he continued to favor partially privatizing Social Security. Bear in mind that ordinary Americans are already more vulnerable to stock market fluctuations than ever before. Twenty years ago most workers had "defined benefit" pension plans: their employers promised them a certain amount per year. During the long bull market, however, such plans were largely replaced with 401(k)'s - "defined contribution" plans whose payoff depends on the market. This sounded great when stocks were rising. But now many will find either that they can't retire, or that they will have to get by with much less than they expected. For some, Social Security will be all that's left. Mr. Bush first proposed privatizing Social Security back when people still believed that stocks only go up. Even then his proposal made no sense; as I've explained before, it was based on the claim that 2-1=4, that you can divert the payroll taxes of younger workers into personal accounts and still pay promised benefits to older workers. But now even the nonsensical promise that individual accounts would earn stock market returns looks pretty unappealing. So why does he keep pushing the idea? One reason is ideology: hard-line conservatives are determined to build a bridge back to the 1920's. Another is Mr. Bush's infallibility complex: to back off on privatization would be to admit, at least implicitly, to a mistake - and this administration never, ever does that. But there may be a third reason. Ask yourself: Who would benefit directly from the creation of "personal accounts" under Social Security? Those personal accounts won't be like personal stock portfolios. The Social Security Administration can't and won't become a stockbroker for 130 million clients, most of them with quite small accounts. Instead it's likely that a privatization scheme would require individuals to invest with one of a handful of designated private investment funds. That would mean enormous commissions for the managers of those funds. And those who would be likely to benefit showed their appreciation, in advance: During the 2000 election, according to opensecrets.org, campaign contributors in the two categories labeled "securities and investment" and "miscellaneous finance" (basically individual wheeler-dealers) gave Mr. Bush almost six times as much as they gave Al Gore. Here, too, Mr. Bush's past is prologue. I reported in an earlier column the story of Utimco, the University of Texas fund that, while Mr. Bush was governor and the current secretary of commerce, Donald Evans, headed the U.T. regents, placed more than $1 billion with private funds, many with close business or political ties to Mr. Bush himself. Among the beneficiaries were the Wyly brothers, who later financed a crucial smear campaign against John McCain. ("Bush reveals his poisonous colors" was the headline of a piece about that campaign, written by the online pundit Andrew Sullivan.) Could America's retirement savings really be used to reward the administration's friends? Ask the teachers of Texas. In one of many odd deals during Mr. Bush's time as governor, the Texas teachers' retirement system sold several buildings without open bids, taking a $70 million loss, to a company controlled by Richard Rainwater, a prime mover behind Mr. Bush's rise to wealth. In an Aug. 16, 1998, article in The Houston Chronicle - which should be required reading for anyone trying to understand the Bush administration - the reporter, R. G. Ratcliffe, matter-of-factly summarized this and many other unusual deals thus: "A pattern emerges: When a Bush is in power, Bush's business associates benefit." Of course, personal Social Security accounts would have to be managed by nationally reputable institutions. Mr. Bush couldn't give the business to his old Texas cronies - could he? When a politician won't let go of a proposal that, by any normal calculation, should be completely off the table, you have to wonder. Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company | Permissions | Privacy Policy