Turning off the tube

I watch little or no television. When I do watch it, I usually tune to C-Span and their various policy-related programming. I’m not sure what the exact quote is, or who said it, but there is an adage that people who are productive and get things done, don’t watch much television.

Occasionally, some program catches my fancy and I’ll watch a number of episodes of it, usually once it’s in syndication on a cable channel—West Wing was the last program that I watched regularly, but I can tell I’ve grown tired of it because I only watch an episode here and there—they are all repeats to me now, anyway. As for the current season, I’ve lost interest with all the character defections.

I wasn’t always so austere in my television viewing. At one time, I would come home from work, eat dinner, and plunk myself down in front to the television for three hours before bed. During that time, I rarely read and when I did, it was usually magazines, and occasionally, I’d plow through a book, but it would take several weeks and I rarely finished it.

These days, I’ve committed to reading as much as I can when I’m not writing, so there isn’t a lot of room for television in my life. I’m not sure how many books a year I’ve read over the past couple of years, but I’m sure I average two to three books per month. Granted, I may not always read them from front to back, as some books are better read in sections, but I do draw key points from them. As a result of this reading, I’ve been able to fill in a lot of holes in my knowledge about politics, religion, economics, and other topics that I was grossly uninformed about.

It is in that context that my occasional forays into network television inevitably bring such visceral reactions—as in, “how the hell do people watch 29 hours of this shit a week!” Case in point—my burning the candle at both ends finally caught up with me yesterday, as I woke up with a pounding headache and flu symptoms. As much as I ply my constitution with herbal teas, supplements, and vitamins, nothing replaces adequate rest for maintaining a healthy immune system. As a result of feeling lousy, my head felt too clouded to read much of anything. Instead, I watched a couple of hours of bad television in the afternoon. From being treated to People’s profile of LL Cool J, to some other infomercial about Britney Spears and her difficult life of fame, it’s not hard for me to understand why most Americans have become so stupid, or “dumbed down”, as commentators more kindly say. In hindsight, I probably should have just left the squawkbox off entirely, but in my weakened state, I succumbed to old habits.

I realized that after only two hours of this programming, my head was filled with absolute junk and rubble that served absolutely no purpose, at least from the standpoint of developing my intellect. It did expose me to countless commercials and pitches for the products that marketers pitch to consumers, however.

I won’t go as far as some and condemn all television—it certainly has its redeeming features—unfortunately, most of it is absolute dross, so limiting television input would seem like a positive thing.

You don’t have to cut out television entirely; cutting just one hour per day of television viewing from your life and replacing it with some good reading material could prove beneficial in many ways. A good book from the library could captivate you and possibly, you might become so engrossed, that you’ll leave the television off entirely. Reading is a habit like any other (including watching television). Taking time to cultivate this habit will reward you with a reduction from sensory overload, but also open up an entire new area of vitality in your brain. The more you read, the more you tend to learn about the world. The more that you know about your world, the less likely you are to be manipulated by the media, marketers, or the Machiavellian con men currently running our government.

Liberal media, my ass!

So tell me once again, why I'm not as qualified as those journalistic hacks with their degrees from prestigious places of higher education to comment on subjects such as Social Security?

Speaking of Social Security, here are the highlights of the journalistic buffoonery taking place this past week concerning the President's ill-concieved plan to privitize it.

Tim Russert--He of "Meet the Press" fame and holder of 22 honorary doctorates from various American colleges and universities to name but a few of his various awards. Russert, who rarely misses the opportunity to lob a "softball" of a question towards his subjects, has become a friend of Republicans in trouble. Russert is becoming the Sunday morning equivalent of Larry King.

Brit Hume--plays an objective journalist on Fox News and serves as their managing editor and chief Washington correspondant. Hume is often seen cheerleading Republican proposals on tax breaks for the wealthy and President Bush's war in Iraq. Takes the label "hack" to new heights (or lows, depending on your perspective/ideology).

Chris Matthews--frequently attempts to imitate an "old school" yellow-dog Democrat, with his faux pugnaciousness. Like most mainstream news personalities, he toes his network's corporate line, because he would find it difficult to live on anything less than his seven figure salary.

CBS Evening News--One of the "dinosaurs" of TV news, rarely, if ever offers viewers anything that deviates from the network's corporate talking points.

Not to dispair, however. Paul Krugman, an economist, who actually does a great job as a true journalist lets us in on a few dirty little secrets concerning Mr. Bush and his investment industry friends. Not to mention the retirees who are primed for getting screwed by the plan.

Stay tuned; it's sure to get worse, before it gets better, if it ever does so.

The truth about Social Security

As I touched on briefly yesterday, one of President Bush's major campaign proposals was the privitization of Social Security. During a good portion of the closing days of his campaign, the President told Americans the lie that Social Security was in trouble and that only he, God's appointed potentate, could save it.

President Bush has made it a practice to foist his Ponzi schemes on the unsuspecting and gullible American electorate. From his under-funded No-Child-Left-Behind, gutting of important environmental safeguards, the war in Iraq, to his disastrous tax cuts for the wealthy, this president has been anything but a visionary leader. At times, he's appeared more like the pied-piper leading America's working class off the proverbial cliff!

For the uninitiated, let's just take a brief look at Social Security. It was created by the Roosevelt Administration in 1935 as part of the New Deal. The amount of benefits in retirement is typically based on the total amount of accumulated Social Security Income over a beneficiary's working career. Basically, the amount of taxes taken out of your paycheck, matched by your employer's contribution.

Social Security's official name is Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance, or (OASDI). It is intended to be an insurance program for workers who are disabled, retired, or who die prematurely. It is there to provide worker's families from potential loss of income.

By offering basic benefits, SSI helps retired workers, disabled workers, or the survivors of deceased workers to stay out of poverty. In 2000, 40 percent more households over the age of 65, including almost 33 percent of elderly Hispanics, would have been living in poverty if not for Social Security.

Social Security's benefits provide only a basic minimum. The average monthly benefit was $851.40 in 2002.

So, is Social Security in trouble and in need of our fearless leader's helping hand? Well, if you read some of the articles by the press, they would lead you to believe than none of us currently working will see a dime of benefit come retirement time. Our sycophantic journalistic corps, rather than researching the issue (as I'm sure they were taught at Columbia, NYU, or the other bastions of journalistic preparation), have consistently relied on the hand-feeding of members of the administration for their background to stories on SSI. As a result, the average American has come to believe that something drastic needs to be done to save our retirements--like privitization.

Story after story, news feature after news feature have scared Americans into believing that "Social Security is going bankrupt....it's coming apart at the seams", or assigned a date; usually 2042, as the year that "Social Security will go broke."

Since Americans are a trusting people, of course they are going to be concerned when they are constantly told by our fawning press that Social Security is messed up and needs some fixin'.

In point of fact however, Social Security is actually doing just fine. What? How could that be? Our President says "it broke and need fixin'", so we need to listen to El Bushco, right?

Who's right about Social Security--those in the President's camp, who say it's going bankrupt in 2029, or 2042, or those who say it's fine and needs little or any tinkering to remain solvent?

Consider these facts:

For now, Social Security is taking in more through the payroll tax than it is paying out in benefits. Lots more!

In 2003, income to the Social Security trust fund, including interest earned on the accumulated surplus, totaled $632 billion. Outlays, including administrative expenses, were $479 billion. That left an annual surplus of $153 billion, or about four months worth of benefits. At the end of the year, the trust fund had more than $1.5 trillion — more than three years' worth of benefits. Baby boomers, who will start to become eligible for partial benefits in 2008 and full benefits in 2012, are about to turn this equation on its head.

Today there are 3.3 workers for each retiree; by 2040, there will be 2. Social Security's board of trustees — three federal officials and three knowledgeable private citizens — estimate that benefits will overtake revenue in 2018. The program will be able to pay scheduled benefits only by drawing down its surplus. In 2042, the trustees estimate, Social Security will become "insolvent." The surplus will be exhausted, and annual payroll tax revenue will be the only source of cash. It will be enough to pay only about three-fourths of promised benefits. Neither benefit levels nor taxes will be the same then as they are today. Benefits rise annually with price inflation; initial benefits are determined by wage history. Wages earned early in the recipient's career are adjusted for subsequent inflation. But this adjustment is calculated by using wage inflation, not price inflation. Wages have outpaced prices over the years, and wage growth between now and 2042 is projected to exceed price growth by more than 25%. So, even if Congress did not touch Social Security's benefit formula through 2042, a 25% benefit cut when the surplus ran out would still leave benefits slightly higher than they were now — even after adjusting for price inflation. That, according to opponents of private accounts, is not exactly a formula for disaster. On the revenue side of the ledger, the Social Security payroll tax rate — 6.2%, matched by an equal tax on the employer — has not changed since 1990. But the maximum wage on which the tax is levied, $87,900 in 2004, rises annually with wage inflation.

From Joel Havemann's article in the Los Angeles Times, "Many Democrats accuse Republicans of intentionally making Social Security's future look bleaker than it is so that they can more easily sell their privatization proposals. The Republican agenda, they say, is more ideological than financial: the promotion of Bush's 'ownership society'."

According to Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, there is "an incredible misunderstanding of the basic problem. The public thinks the program will disappear in 10 to 20 years."

The reality?

According to Baker, an analyst who opposes private accounts, "if Congress acted now, it could guarantee Social Security's solvency for the next 75 years with a tax increase of less than one-quarter the size of the one enacted in the 1980s."

That doesn't sound like a crisis--it sounds like an opportunity for Congress to do their job and stop playing around with one of the best and most beneficial programs of our social safety net.

Looking to the north

Americans are enamoured by the sound of our own voices. Like the proverbial single hand clapping, many Americans consider themselves the be all and end all when it comes to defining western civilization.

In reality, we are a boorish, uncultured, violent and imperialistic blight on the rest of the world. Case in point? Consider the comparison to Canada, our naughty neighbor to the north. As Mark Morford writes in Wednesday's San Franicsco Gate, "It's getting more confusing by the minute, isn't it? I mean, Canada now has legal medical pot and legal gay marriage and universal health care and no known terrorist enemies and a relatively successful multiparty political system. They also have, according to U.N.'s Human Development Index, one of the highest qualities of life in the world. All coupled with a dramatically reduced rate of gun violence and far better gun-control legislation than the U.S., despite having the exact same per capita rate of gun ownership and gun-sport enthusiasm. "

Morford's column referenced Canada's high court ruling which opened the door to legalizing gay marriage in Canada-true north, strong and free.

Unlike our own fundamentalist president, Canada's Prime Minister is an open-minded man, recognizing the dignity in all people, regardless of race, creed, or sexual orientation. Take for instance that Prime Minister Paul Martin said his government will introduce a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Parliament after the Christmas holidays. He has told his Cabinet ministers that they must vote for the bill to retain their posts. The bill is likely to get the 155 votes it needs for passage in the 308-seat House of Commons, advocates on both sides of the issue say. Canada would become the third country -- joining Belgium and the Netherlands -- to legalize same-sex marriage. Interestingly, both of these other gay-friendly countries are known for their exceptional standards of living, as well as universal health care.

When it comes to leading the world in areas that matter; human rights, tolerance, and access to a better standard of living, arrogant America could take a few lessons from countries that lead by example. Like Canada!

As Morford says about Canada, "...they simply beat us senseless on the whole open-minded, progressive thing. Kicked our flag-wavin' butts. Trounced our egomaniacal self-righteous selves and made the red states look even more foolish and backward than the whole world already knows them to be. "

Getting squeezed by rising prices

In yesterday’s Portland Press Herald, the front page headline was about our public utility, Central Maine Power Company, raising its rates 17 percent in March.

Certainly, the cost of producing electricity has gone up due to increases in the price of oil and other related fuels. However, a rate hike of this magnitude is substantial. It has the greatest impact on those on the margins of society and others on fixed-incomes, not to mention that it adds more strain to the already cost-burdened middle-class homeowner.

First of all, for the purposes of public disclosure, I want my readers to know that I did work for 10 years in the power industry, for CMP. Having disclosed that, I’m not real happy about a rate hike on top of all the other increased costs consumers are facing. During the past three months, the cost of fuel, food and a number of other consumer goods have increased. Meanwhile, wages remain stagnant, so working class people are falling further behind in the Bush administration’s “robust” economy.

Like other segments of the utility sector, electricity generation has gone through a period of deregulation. The current version of CMP isn’t anything like the utility I left in 1995. Much of the control of the company has shifted and while still regulated by the Maine Public Utilities Commission, most of the decisions are made by out of state executives.

Deregulation, along with privatization are two of the free-market schemes frequently trotted out by conservatives as panaceas to all of our price concerns. Constantly, conservatives tell us if we just let the market set prices, consumers will be the beneficiaries of greater efficiencies and lower prices. In reality, this hasn’t happened in any of the areas where deregulation has been allowed. From the breakup of Ma Bell and the telecommunications industry, to the deregulation of the airline industry, the free market has done nothing that would remotely benefit consumers. While the case could be made that deregulation has given us lower airline fares, in reality, it’s severely weakened the major players in the industry, forcing the government to step in and subsidize an essential part of the country’s transportation mix. In essence, John and Jane Q. Public are subsidizing those lower fares with our taxes, which never seem to get lower.

Regardless of whether or not deregulation and privatization have worked, the President is determined to do his damn well best to privatize Social Security next. Despite the fact that its demise and disappearance is a myth, the administration, with the backing of a right-wing majority in Congress, is aggressively pursuing this plan. Like all schemes, this one is another recipe for disaster and will cripple many hard-working Americans when they are ready to retire.