Hold The Money In Your Name

Here's what I think Bush should say about Social Security reform and private accounts. Instead of getting sidetracked into convoluted arguments about rates of return of stocks vs. bonds and other lesser arguments, he should cut to the heart of the matter:

My fellow Americans, I want you to have the ability to use private accounts to help pay for your retirement. The Democrats don't.

You know what? If you let them have your money, their party will rip you off. So will mine. So will any party. We're all the same crooks.

We proved it last time, over and over. That's why we're having this discussion in the first place: because the "trust fund" turned out not to be a fund at all, and the "lockbox" was never locked. Every single penny you contributed to your pension over the years has already been spent, and it sure wasn't by you, was it? Don't let it happen again. Possession is 9/10 of the law: hold the money in your name.

Hold it in your name because if you don't, we - politicians of every parties, now and in the future - will spend it all over again, just like we did last time. And you'll be right back at square one ... only older and with less time to recover. Fool me once, shame on you? Well, we were all fooled once by those who said, "trust us," and who assured us that the fund was just fine, when it wasn't. You gonna let 'em fool you twice?

There's a lotta politicians who don't even see it as theft when they spend your pension. They see as far as the next election, and use your money to get themselves reelected. And they'll keep doing that just as long as you let 'em.

Don't let 'em.

Will private accounts give you such a better return that they solve all funding problems, forever? You know what? ... that's such a minor issue compared to what I'm talking about. They'll help, sure. But it's just not the key reason for them; keeping the money in your hands, and out of ours, is.

You & I both know, opportunities for real reform don't come around every day, where we have the will and the means to fix the problem. But we have that today, so let's fix this one while we can.

It's up to you. You need to decide, who do you trust more with your money: you, or the same bunch who spent it all last time. Cuz that's what private accounts are really gonna protect you from. When all is said and done, your pension's gonna be held by someone. Why would you trust it to anyone else?

Hold the money in your name. After all, it's yours, isn't it?

If Bush came out and said anything like the above, and stuck to it, private accounts would be reality in a heartbeat. Maybe they will, anyway, but the odds'd be a lot better if he came right out and told everyone what the real issues with private accounts are.

Coming Soon: Just Fill Out The Form....

Form MF-0001:		Disclosure Of Verbal Contributions
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Your Legal Name:
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	The above may also be used to report M-F violations. Please address to “FEC McCain-Feingold Violations Division.” It is a federal offence to knowingly file false reports. Legislation approved by World Opinion™, all rights reserved.

The Empire Strikes Back

Is the FEC, using McCain-Feingold as its sword of "justice," going to try to regulate blogging?

Think it thru. They cannot regulate each and every posting, as has been suggested. They may want to - no surprise there. But they can't.

For example: Captain's Quarters correctly notes that he - a Bush supporter in the last election - linked four times as often to Kerry's site as to Bush's. If the FEC wishes to count links as contributions to a campaign, then it will also have to assess the intent of each link, whether it was to help or hurt a candidate, or whether it is, in their eyes, "balanced." And if it was designed to hurt a candidate, which other candidates(s) benefitted, if any, and by how much. That's all more than any poor little bureaucracy can handle.

So where does it leave them in terms of what they can do? Something that is still consistent with a mindset that people need regulation, lest they say and hear incorrect opinions?

What else - accredited journalists. Yes, their approach, whether they arrive there tomorrow or after a few years of argument, will be that only "accredited" journalists will be allowed to comment during elections. Or at least, only they will be allowed to comment without subsequent FEC harassment and auditing.

And who will do the accreditation, you ask? Hard to say. The FEC may want the power for themselves; what bureaucracy doesn't? Then again, if the opposition to the regulation is strong enough, they may choose to ditch operational control and give it to someone they can hide behind ... now who might that be? ... no peeking! ... oh, you can guess ... the MSM!

Only j-school graduates or those with "sufficient" MSM experience need apply. And once the MSM is able to decide who else can join them, the gates will be closed.

I have no inside knowledge on this subject whatsoever, so the above is pure surmisal. But, if you can, put yourself in a pro- McCain-Feingold state of mind, and think about how you would go about controlling bloggers.

You'll soon realize: All other options are logistically impossible (never make a law you can't enforce). There's really no way, other than to corral pre-selected controllees into a group of manageable size, and shut everyone else up entirely.

So I dunno if they can pull it off or not, but I sure as hell expect them to try, now; this has been brewing for a while.

Propaganda Writ Large

Watching the Left spin propaganda against Bush's recent successes in the Middle East, so far to no avail, got me to thinking: What if they pulled it off? What if they got people to believe that up is down, and thereby unlearn all the valuable lessons of the past few years? Shudder.

Which in turn led me to ask: hmm, what are the most damaging propaganda triumphs of all time? Now there's an interesting question. Here's a couple, just off the top of my head, to get you started:

• MYTH: Nazis are right-wing, which is the opposite of left-wing.
  
  FACT: Hitler was, in fact, right in the mainstream of socialism in his day. There was a reason he called his party The "National Socialists," after all.
  
  DAMAGE: By disassociating themselves from Hitler, socialists were able to avoid being relegated to the same rubbish heap as he. Stalin, for example, was widely praised and supported in many parts of the West, as were his successors, even up to this day.


• MYTH: The stock market crash of 1929 was the result of capitalist excess and speculation, leading to the Depression.
  
  FACT: There was never enough money in the stock market to cause a depression. It was a fraction (5%?) of the size of the bond market. When the markets in general sensed bond troubles - ultimately leading to massive defaults soon after, so the markets' sense of it beforehand was indeeed correct - they started moving money in a reverse of the usual "flight to quality" definition: i.e. they went from bonds to stocks. Given the disparities in market sizes, it only took a little bond money to drive stocks skyward. That's when the get-rich-quick crowd jumped on the trend, and the rest, as they say, is history.
  
  DAMAGE: Capitalist societies, by blaming private enterprise, took more power away from the people and gave it to govt. Big govt came to the West, riding on the back of its own failures, and has remained to this day.

Leave your own nominees in the comments section. I'll post those that really stand out. The more we understand propaganda, the better we can resist it in the future.

BTW, please confine your comments to events that took place at least 50 years ago, as I have no wish to fight modern propaganda battles over this.

Justice? They Musta Left It In Their Other Suit

Given the all-attack, all-the-time nature of the Left, perhaps this was inevitable:

Two U.S. human rights groups [including the ACLU] sued Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday, saying he first authorized and then failed to stop torture of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The ACLU did launch a similar suit against Kofi Annan and the UN over Rwanda, right? But I'm having trouble finding a copy.

You see, instead of a handful of torture cases performed by lower-level soldiers acting on their own, Rwanda was a confirmed half a million innocents slaughtered, with the full knowledge and complicity of Kofi & the UN. The facts aren’t even in dispute.

Those truly interested in justice will, of course, want to see the Rwanda matter given priority. So, would anyone reading this have a link to that other suit?

For some reason, I can’t seem to find one anywhere.