More on the youth vote and tomorrow's election in Iran from Foreign Policy:
So if the clerics hold all the power, why do we care about this election?
Many Iranian reformists are asking themselves this very question. Voters eager for change came out in large numbers to elect the reformist Mohammad Khatami in 1997 and again in 2001. But Khatami failed to push back the heavy hand of the clerics in daily life and enact much-needed economic reforms. Khatami’s powerlessness was on full display in 1999, during a brutal crackdown on student demonstrators, and last year, when he could do nothing as the government shut down hundreds of publications and barred reformist candidates from running for parliament. Surveys show that only about half of Iran’s electorate plans to vote on Friday.
The election is still a good barometer of Iranian politics and the government’s political intentions. Political change is so popular in Iran that even conservative candidates are couching their platform in reformist language.
What exactly is an Iranian “reformist,” anyway?
Reform encompasses several grievances with clerical rule. Foremost among them are a stagnant economy and the trampling of civil liberties. The young, in particular, are angry and disillusioned with the lack of jobs, governments censorship, and restrictions on intermingling between the sexes. Many are also eager to see an end to Iran’s isolation from the West.
The reform movement, after Khatami’s failure as president, is now facing a dilemma over whether to seek change from within the system or boycott the election altogether. Because the young are unlikely to rock the vote as they did in the last two presidential elections, the reformists will probably not win. And if they vote and lose, they’ve lent legitimacy to the process. As one student leader told the New York Times: “People are tired of lending a democratic face to this regime.”
posted by Hans Riemer at 11:31 AM
5 Comments:
The problem with the agenda-pushers on the Right who have blindly chosen to follow the half-truths of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and President Bush off of the cliff of political sanity in the Social Security debate like lemmings into the sea, is the fact that they are operating under the false premise that Social Security needs reform lest America be devoured by a money grubbing sea creature living at the end of the earth who happens to have socialist leaning tendencies.
Everybody on the reform bandwagon (which does not include the majority of Americans or even the majority of Republicans in Congress) has rather frighteningly embraced the "lie" that the cost of "doing nothing" to Social Security will be $11 trillion. Now, to any reasonable person this seems like an unhealthy sum that if allowed to fester and continue to accumulate could only do horribly bad things to America on the order of kicking walkers out from underneath partially-mobile senior citizens and turning off the heat "Enron-style" to the homes of little old ladies in the dead of winter. However, the magic $11 trillion cost, that according to one zealous Rock the Vote blog commenter "everyone agrees on," actually originated in the projections of the 2003 Social Security Trustees Report as the cost over the "infinite horizon." Not surprisingly, the year 2003 was the first in which the Trustees Report ever included a confusing infinite horizon projection. Perhaps I have grown prematurely cynical in my young age, but it seems rather suspicious that the Trustees Report included a nice, fat, scary, double-digit number predicting a fiscal crisis caused by Social Security just in time for the President's glorious reform proposal.
Naw. Definitely no insight into a political modus operandi there.
The American Academy of Actuaries (a nonpartisan group that sets the standards of practice for actuaries in America), has said publicly that infinite horizon projection provides "little if any useful information about the program's [Social Security] long-term finances." They also went on to say that such projections and projecting techniques are often complex and confusing to the layperson- I suppose all the better if one's goal is to pull the wool over the eyes of the American public.
A figure that most folks, partisan and nonpartisan alike agree on, but do not like to publicize, is the $3.7 trillion shortfall in Social Security over the next 75 years. Despite being quite a chunk of change, $3.7 trillion is a much less daunting sum than the mythical $11 trillion Jabberwocky paraded about by the White House. In fact, the most conservative estimates of the cost of moving to a system of private accounts (or "personal" accounts as the reform spinmeisters would say- same difference) is $2 trillion over the next two decades. Gee, with that much extra cash being bandied about we could come up with a solution that meets the 75 year shortfall (after which the baby boom generation will not be around- sorry guys) and preserves Social Security as a guaranteed benefit for our nation's senior citizens.
Segments of the Right have curiously turned this crusade to reform Social Security into a tacit endorsement of a government-run pension scheme, where you the individual have as much choice as the government will let you have. How the civil libertarians ever got on this sinking ship is beyond me.
The fact remains that wealthy and most middle class Americans have their own PRIVATE (nothing to do with the government) plans that will provide for the majority of their retirement needs and wants. Social Security was never intended to be a government pension plan, but instead was meant to provide for and supplement a dignified retirement for those who in old age do not have any alternative means of providing for themselves.
Who are these organizations discernibly on the Right that are pushing for Social Security "reform" in order to make a name for themselves? I seem to recall a protest of the recent Rock the Vote awards ceremony engineered by one of the spin-off groups of the notoriously Right-wing Koch Foundation called "Americans for Prosperity." If these Koch-heads are indeed a grassroots organization, perhaps they would not mind an investigation of their non-profit status? If they are indeed a bunch of Republicans sitting around a table (as has been mentioned on this blog before: see "Surprise Boner") and scheming about how to launch attacks on larger, more prominent organizations that they assume disagree with their heavily ideological position; should they be allowed to cloak themselves in the shroud of several different non-profit statuses?
Perhaps the fact that the majority of the public and congressional Republicans do not want to follow the President into dismantling Social Security should be a clue to the impending irrelevancy of these mouthpiece groups.
I mean, come on. Who isn't for prosperity?
See for yourself:
http://www.factcheck.org/article302.html
A little problem with your following post, anon:
"In fact, the most conservative estimates of the cost of moving to a system of private accounts (or "personal" accounts as the reform spinmeisters would say- same difference) is $2 trillion over the next two decades. Gee, with that much extra cash being bandied about we could come up with a solution that meets the 75 year shortfall (after which the baby boom generation will not be around- sorry guys) and preserves Social Security as a guaranteed benefit for our nation's senior citizens"
It takes 2 trillion to reform the system to something that will help make it solvent for its long-term future. It takes 3.7 billion to just to make it solvent for 75 years. Hmmmm, I think I will go for the 2 trillion. I know the difference of 1.75 trillion dollars is not much to a liberal, but it is to me. Your idea only keeps the system solvent for 75 years, which is arguable in itself. Then you assume once the babyboomers are gone, the system will be roses. Yeah right. The babyboomers aren't retired now, and the system sucks now. Explain that to me.
People like those who advocate Rock the Vote's position on this issue are slowly, but surely, going to be responsible for the downfall of the public education system.
At this rate, I'm going to HAVE to send my kids to private school, if RTV and the likes get away with shoving the homosexual agenda down the throats of all public school children. RTV and the liberal left- while always preaching choice- never practice it. In being so absolutist towards school curricula, the left is basically telling any parent who wishes to have control over their child's own development to "f**k off" and go find a private school.
whoops, wrong blog entry. That can be deleted.
I was encouraged for a moment that this election might yield progress in Iran, but after I investigated the Iranian election in Houston, Texas, I am convinced the whole thing is a sham.
It's on my blog if you want to read about my experience.
Click here to read the story, with pictures.
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