Okay, I'm rhyming kinda slow this morning. It was an incredible night. Check out the Post's story on it.
posted by Hans Riemer at 1:09 PM
Thursday, June 09, 2005
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17 Comments:
And the National Review piece...
June 09, 2005, 12:36 p.m.
Rock of the Aged
Rock the Vote meets AARP.
by Sean Higgins
There are few stranger spectacles in Washington than when Hollywood celebrities show up. Serious, high-powered D.C. players will stumble over themselves just to bask — however fleetingly — in the neon-tinted glow of B- or even C-list stars.
This sorry behavior was on full display Wednesday evening at Rock the Vote’s 15th-anniversary gala. Senators John McCain, Barack Obama, and Norm Coleman as well as ex-Democratic National Committee chief Terry McAuliffe and ex-Republican vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp all turned out so they could be seen with such celebs as the hip-hop group the Black Eyed Peas and Amber Tamblyn, star of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
The Republicans’ appearance was especially shameless given the nature of Rock the Vote. The MTV Generation nonprofit RTV bills itself as a nonpartisan group dedicated to voter registration and other young-voter issues. But while RTV may be technically “nonpartisan,” the description is really just a fig leaf: Even a casual observer can tell that RTV is a liberal group. It’s made opposing President Bush’s Social Security agenda a particular crusade, countering the wishes of the very age group it purports to represent.
That’s not surprising if you know who runs RTV. Hans Riemer, the group’s Washington director, was with the liberal group the Campaign for America’s Future before he joined RTV. He ran CAF’s project opposing Bush’s first-term Social Security agenda.
RTV president Jehmu Greene was formerly director of women’s outreach for the DNC and is on the board of the liberal American Prospect magazine. She even offered “a special thanks” to the labor movement during a speech Wednesday.
RTV’s board includes Andrew Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union; Danny Goldberg, CEO of Air America; and Simon Renshaw, manager of the Dixie Chicks.
On the Social Security issue, RTV has tirelessly propagandized against the idea of private accounts. It has gone so far as to team up with AARP, the massively powerful seniors’ lobby and a co-sponsor of Wednesday’s event.
This is despite the fact that numerous polls — even a February one jointly commissioned by AARP and RTV — have shown that most younger voters favor private accounts.
A recent CBS poll found that “Young people under age 30…are the most supportive of President Bush’s plan to allow individuals to invest a portion of their Social Security taxes on their own: two-thirds say it’s a good idea.”
But in this case RTV is happy to oppose those voters’ views. “All the cool kids oppose privatization,” Riemer wrote on RTV’s official blog earlier this year. Like AARP, it maintains there’s no significant funding crisis with the program and will brook no contrary opinion.
Indeed, the National Building Museum, where the event was held, was covered with “I (heart) Social Security” posters, a curious sight for youth-oriented event. Among the evening’s speakers was Tom Nelson, AARP’s chief operating officer, who praised RTV for its help in stalling Bush’s agenda. “We, like Rock the Vote, are going to make sure our Congress does the right on saving Social Security,” he said. He then touted the virtues of old age and AARP membership to all the kids in the room.
Given all this, why were the Republicans — all supporters of Bush’s plan — there giving a bipartisan gloss to the event?
Kemp at first said he was there just to honor McCain and Obama. But he subsequently said he was also there to “engage the adversary.” “Read Sun Tzu,” he said.
Your humble correspondent has not read The Art of War, but based on Kemp’s actions later that night there must be a chapter in it on engaging the adversary through lame comedy skits.
McCain had a bit more lead in his pencil. After warming up the crowd by saying he would become the fifth Black Eyed Pea, “McFunk,” he briefly challenged RTV.
“We’ve got to do something about Social Security,” he told the audience during his award acceptance speech. “You’re not going to get the benefits your parents and grandparents got because the money isn’t going to be there.” But McCain's lone discordant note passed quickly.
Surprisingly, Bill Clinton, billed as the event’s headliner, didn’t show up; he sent a videotaped greeting instead. Who’d have thought he’d be less interested in hanging out with celebrities than the Republicans?
— Sean Higgins is a reporter for Investor's Business Daily.
So McCain said we need Social Security reform. Good for him.
McCain passed his make-or-break test (click here) for young GOP primary voters.
By the way, AARP owns Rock the Vote. How embarrassing.
WILLisms.com has REFORM THURSDAY today and every Thursday!... It may enlighten and inform some of the ROCK THE VOTERS!
“We’ve got to do something about Social Security,” he told the audience during his award acceptance speech. “You’re not going to get the benefits your parents and grandparents got because the money isn’t going to be there.”
This is EXACTLY what I've been saying all along. John McCain is the most maverick and moderate person in the Senate, and even HE supports Social Security reform.
I'd take the word over John McCain over the word of Hans Reimer and AARP anyday.
Isn't inviting both spectrums of the political party to speak a sign of being non-partisan? Both sides of the SS issue were heard...
"Surprisingly, Bill Clinton, billed as the event’s headliner, didn’t show up; he sent a videotaped greeting instead."
Oh, dissed!
"Anyone else sick and tired of seeing "Flat Tax" being used to refer to a fixed percentaged of income tax."
Uh, I've got to say that a single percentage is a lot better than the current progressive tax. It's a wonder anyone can get rich with the government taking 40% of your income.
A national sales tax will only lead to a dual taxation of income and expenditure. As soon as money starts to get tight for the government under a sales tax system, they’ll bring back the income tax, maybe as a small flat tax, but eventually it will increase to its current level.
I agree with Nathan. Flat tax is definitely the way to go- it would save everyone a tremendous amount of money (you wouldn't need to hire an accountant for your taxes anymore), and the super rich could no longer try to get around their taxes by using loopholes and exemptions.
Of course, we'll never get the flat tax, because the liberal left will demagogue it to death, like they do with everything. It is really quite stunning how so many people become the "useful idiots" of the Democratic Party. Rock the Vote's line on Social Security is a typical example, and so is all of the immediate opposition to "flat tax" whenever anyone brings it up.
" Isn't inviting both spectrums of the political party to speak a sign of being non-partisan?"
Uh No Kiddie. Non-Partisanship would be having people on both sides of the political fence be in charge of running the organization. Rock the Vote might as well be renamed Rock the Left.
How come my "Jock the Vote" tag has never caught on?
Too colloquial?
Using my blog to gain insights on grassroots conservatism is like using a baby as a bulletproof vest.
http://courage1.blogspot.com/
Quote: "Uh No Kiddie. Non-Partisanship would be having people on both sides of the political fence be in charge of running the organization. Rock the Vote might as well be renamed Rock the Left."
Well, actually, if you look at AARP's previous decisions, you cannot say they are partisan. They supported the Bush administration when it came to Medicare. It seems that they make decisions on the issue, not the party. So for Medicare the were with Bush but on SS they want to see alternate solutions and do not necessarily approve of Bush's reforms.
As for Rock the Vote, they support the troops in Iraq and they support voting in general, not necessairly for one party. Those are not partisan decisions either.
That being said, I don't really think it's fair to say that both organizations are partisan. Just my opinon.
Where is the truely Flat Tax plan? You know the one where everyone pays the same. Just take the budget and divide that amount by the number of people in the US. Everyone mails a check to the government for exactly the same amount. That is what I'd call a flat tax.
What the crap are you thinking? Look, chief, some people have gotta eat, but with your "truely flat tax" (sic), some people will have to pay 100% of their income to government. Are you going to also make those people have negative income, if they make less than the "tax amount"? Maybe slap em in chains and cart them off to debtors prison, while we're at it.
Wait, if they report that make that little, they're either cheating on their reported income or are welfare whor**, anyway, so yeah, send them to debtors prison.
Well, actually, if you look at AARP's previous decisions, you cannot say they are partisan. They supported the Bush administration when it came to Medicare.
Bush's Medicare plan was the most fiscally irresponsible thing he's done in the past 5 years. Ted Kennedy once supported that plan, too, which shows that yes, AARP was being very partisan- to the left- even when it came to that debate.
AARP is as partisan as it gets. Take a look at their newsletters and press releases. If AARP and RTV aren't partisan, then Bill O'Reilly must be a moderate.
if you look at organizations that way than you can consider every organization and association partisan. All organizations look at an issue and can decide to fall on either side of the argument. Both AARP and RTV have supported different sides at different times. It just doesn't make sense to me to call that partisan...
You're not seeing it.
Both AARP and RTV have supported different sides at different times. It just doesn't make sense to me to call that partisan...
They have NOT supported different sides at different times. They've always supported the most liberal solution possible. AARP supporting Bush's plan is a joke. That Medicare proposal from the President was, bar none, the single dumbest idea presented by any President in the last 25 years. Because of W's idiocy with that plan, Medicare is now in an even bigger crisis situation than Social Security.
AARP supported it because it was a liberal plan, something that even Ted Kennedy once supported. It says NOTHING about any lack of partisanship- in fact, it shows even more partisanship for AARP and RTV- the fact that the only GOP plan they ever supported was a liberal scam run by a President who was big enough of a bumbling idiot to run into the liberal establishment's trap.
The Old and the Rested
By JOHN TIERNEY
Published: June 14, 2005
Men in their 70's raced on bikes for 40 kilometers in this month's National Senior Games in Pittsburgh. A 68-year-old woman threw the discus 85 feet, and a 69-year-old man hurled the javelin nearly half the length of a football field.
Is it possible that people this age are still physically capable of putting in a full day's work at the office?
I realize I'm being impolitic. In the Social Security debate, the notion of raising the retirement age is the elephant in the room, as Robin Toner and David Rosenbaum reported in The Times on Sunday. Both liberal and conservative economists favor the change, but politicians are terrified to even mention it to voters.
Americans now feel entitled to spend nearly a third of their adult lives in retirement. Their jobs are less physically demanding than their parents' were, but they're retiring younger and typically start collecting Social Security by age 62. Most could keep working - fewer than 10 percent of people 65 to 75 are in poor health - but, like Bartleby the Scrivener, they prefer not to.
The problem isn't that Americans have gotten intrinsically lazier. They're just responding to a wonderfully intentioned system that in practice promotes greed and sloth. Social Security is widely thought of as a kumbaya program that unites Americans in caring for the elderly, but it actually creates ugly political battles among generations.
With the help of groups like AARP, the elderly have learned to fight for the right to retire earlier and get bigger benefits than the previous generation - all financed by making succeeding generations pay higher taxes than they ever did themselves.
The result is a system that burdens the young and creates perverse incentives for people to retire when they're still middle-aged. Once you've worked 35 years, more work often yields only a tiny increase in your benefits (sometimes none at all), but you still have to keep paying the onerous Social Security tax, which has more than doubled over the last half century.
If the elderly were willing to work longer, there would be lower taxes on everyone and fewer struggling young families. There would be more national wealth and tax revenue available to help the needy, including people no longer able to work as well as the many elderly below the poverty line because they get so little Social Security.
Getting that kind of system seems politically hopeless at the moment here, but it already exists in Chile. Its pension system has a stronger safety net for the older poor than America's (relative to each country's wages) and more incentives for people to work, because Chileans' contributions go directly into their own private accounts instead of a common pool like Social Security.
Once Chileans accumulate enough money in the account to finance a pension that pays at least half their salary (which is better than what the typical American gets from Social Security), they can start collecting the pension and still go on working. In fact, they have an extra incentive to go on working because they keep more of their paychecks: elderly Chileans, unlike Americans, are freed of the obligation to continue making pension contributions.
The result has been a big change in working habits. Before the private-account system began in 1981, Chile had a traditional pension system going broke with the same problems as America and Europe: rising taxes on the young to pay for older workers who were retiring earlier and earlier. But under the new system, there's been a 30 percent increase in the labor force participation by workers in their 60's, according to two economists, Estelle James and Alejandra Cox Edwards.
Best of all, Chileans who control their own private-account pensions don't have to count on politicians or groups like AARP to decide when they can retire. It's a personal choice, not a public battle, and the Chileans I interviewed had a saner attitude about retirement than the American baby boomers dreaming of retiring to decades of golf.
A 57-year-old schoolteacher, Maria Clara Meyer, told me she was thinking of spending her 60's running her own tutoring program or setting up an ecotourism business in Chile. "I'm a little tired of my teaching job," she said, "but I'm not stupid, so I shall keep doing something. It's not healthy for you to stop working if you're still able." And not healthy for your country, either.
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