WHERE’S THE LEFT?
Gil French highlights an important point (The Mail, January 19)
when he correctly says that Kerry ran “an abortion of a campaign” and
in regards to Bush, asks, “Who voted for this fool?”
           How come
the supposed “opposition party” isn’t very oppositional? And how
could people vote for Bush, seemingly against their own economic and social
interests?” No one is talking about these questions.
           “Who
voted for this fool?” Thirty-three percent of the population. As Howard
Zinn suggested in a column for The
Progressive magazine: “If we were truly democratic, then maybe the 40
percent nonvoters who were the plurality might have their wish: no president at
all.”
           The
elephant in the room (no pun intended) is that the Daily Show with John Stewart
is the ideological leadership of the “left.” In all its hilariousness
and genius, it’s a TV show and not a guidepost for organizing. I’m not one for
labels, but generally speaking, and according to polls, 50 percent of the
people disapprove of the war and only a small minority is organizing to stop
it. This is the “left,” but right now, it’s not answering those big
questions, so the gap between those organizing and those who agree with the
organizers is huge.
           This past
Saturday, 100 people discussed these issues at the first-ever Rochester Antiwar
Conference. This was a tremendous first step. The next one is to get out and
protest at 4 p.m. on March 19 at the
Blue Cross Arena.
           But what we
need is a sustained forum to answer these big questions and a group that can
organize to do something with what we learn. On March 20, there is an interest
meeting at Java’s on Gibbs Street
at 3 p.m. for a citywide Rochester
Antiwar Committee, for anyone who is against the war and wants to do something
about it.
           Peopleare out there who agree with us, but
they aren’t going to organize themselves or answer their own questions. We have
to debate, discuss, and then organize — together, and for a purpose.
           Brian Lenzo, Monroe Avenue, Rochester
NO CRISIS?
Paul Van Ness listed a number of very impressive “basic
facts” regarding Social Security’s “trust fund” (The Mail, March
2), but he omitted the most important one: The “trust fund” is an
accounting fiction, a myth. Its $1.4 trillion is made up, mostly, of government
IOU’s, because they have already been spent by other branches of the
government. So when the receipts from payroll taxes start falling short of the
outlays (and we can argue about when that will happen), those IOU’s will be as
good as wallpaper unless backed up by tax increases, or benefit cuts, or both.
           One cannot
really blame Mr. Van Ness for holding onto the pious illusion that we have a
real trust fund. After all, somebody who should know better, like Paul Krugman of the New
York Times, never tires of telling us about this “trust fund.”
           For myself,
I remember with amusement when President Clinton, back in 1998, launched the
alarm: “Save Social Security first,” as the Reagan economic reforms
were starting to produce the first budget surpluses. Democrats were all
applauding then.
           They have,
since then, created the other myth of the $10-billion surplus supposedly
squandered by Dubya. Hello, out there! It was just a
projection! Not a real surplus! Other things and other priorities have
intervened since. Not that Clinton,
as usual, ever did anything about Social Security except,
in his good old Bubba fashion, talk about it, but here we are, seven years
later, without the demographics having improved a bit, and, lo and behold,
there is no crisis according to the Dems! Go figure!
           Italo G. Savella, FernwoodPark, Rochester
IF, BUT, AND…
Paul Van Ness makes the argument that there is no impending
crisis with the Social Security Trust Fund (The Mail, March 2), stating,
“the money is held in the form of government bonds which pay interest at
an average rate of 6 percent a year.” He then cites a litany of
“ifs” (if life expectancy changes, if inflation decreases, if wages
increase, etc.) to make his case.
           Mr. Van
Ness, along with most Americans, misunderstands how the Social Security Trust
Fund functions. It contains no assets. It has no money, either cash or
“investments.” The Trust Fund is really just a “promise to pay” in
the future, guaranteed by the Social Security Administration and backed by the
government. Payments made today by workers are used immediately to pay benefits
to Social Security recipients, and no actual “surplus” exists in any
form.
           What does
the Social Security Administration itself say about the Trust Fund balances?
“They do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the
future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims on the Treasury that, when
redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public,
or reducing benefits or other expenditures. The existence of large Trust Fund
balances, therefore, does not, by itself, have any impact on the government’s
ability to pay benefits.” (From FY 2000 Budget, Analytical Perspectives,
page 337.)
           There’s an
old rhyme that goes: “If ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ were fruits and nuts, we’d all have a
very merry Christmas.”
           I’m not
willing to gamble on the stability of the Social Security System for young
workers and younger citizens. Sticking one’s head in the sand is OK for
ostriches but raises hell with people. Even reasoned middle-of-the-road
analyses predict future shortfalls in the ability of Social Security to pay its
obligations to those who are currently funding the system. Fix Social Security
now.
           John Walsh, HoneoyeFalls
WRITING TO CITY
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This article appears in Mar 16-22, 2005.
