Like the others a Democrat, Sangisetty is trying to keep Melancon’s present seat in the hands of the party but has run up against the salient fact of the 2010 election cycle: national Democrats in power in the past two years overreached with a very liberal agenda in a conservative country, highlighting the internal contradictions of liberalism and how it poorly matches to reality compared to conservatism, thereby presenting in stark relief to voters the invalidity of the ideas associated with Democrats. As such, he is considered a heavy underdog against Republican Jeff Landry.
While Melancon badly trails, and Richmond nurses a small lead, Sangisetty falls somewhere in between. Like Melancon’s approach in his race, he has tried a strategy trying to smear Landry with distorted personal attacks that has no basis in reality. But he also has tried to appropriate the label of a “conservative Democrat,” trying to stress on social issues that he appears as conservative as does Landry. He even claims he won't support the current Democrat leadership for Speaker of the House. One wonders why he didn't just run in the GOP primary that Landry won, with rhetoric like this, but that would be incompatible with his fiscal liberalism.
As such, he’s attempted to undo the damage of his association with the party leading the country into increasing debt and slower economic growth by accusing Landry of wanting to disrupt the defined benefit pension plan Social Security to make it less secure – despite the fact that the presumed insurance plan takes in less than it pays out and will run out of money (that already is a debt obligation of the federal government) in less than 30 years to pay for benefits. Landry wants to allow voluntary privatization of a sort. Yet, here again, Sangisetty can’t avoid the cost of liberalism.
Democrats resist ideas Landry likes such as allowing workers to use Social Security payments in defined contributions plans like individual retirement accounts (such as is done in Chile and other countries and in some U.S. states), or even to invest a small amount of proceeds in other than government accounts because ultimately they want to control the funds. It allows for more government jobs to be created, more taxpayer dollars to be spent, greater sums that can be dealt with (such as lending it to government itself), and, generally, this retains greater control over the people. It comports to their philosophy that government runs knows best how to manage people’s resources, especially when Democrats are in charge.
Which historical study and empirical analysis decisively refutes, as a recent analysis specifically on this issue corroborates. Researchers noted that had a working couple now reaching retirement age whose jobs tracked the median income at the beginning of their working lives had invested the same amounts of their Social Security payments 90 percent in large capitalization equities and 10 percent in small capitalization equities (considered a risky strategy), even in retiring the year after the worst stock market 10-year performance since 1926 they would still have beaten the return on which their Social Security payouts would have been based by 75 percent. If they then shifted it all into a conservative investment portfolio, the payout rate they would enjoy would be twice that of Social Security’s (and keep in mind that on a sum 75 percent larger).
So when Sangisetty echoes Pres. Barack Obama that Landry “wants to give Social Security over to the very Wall Street gamblers that have gotten us into this economic mess,” he’s just showing his ignorance about the concepts Landry rightly and astutely promotes. Despite all his efforts to try to escape the fact, Sangisetty just mouths failed bromides that a majority of the district’s residents have had ample opportunity to see through by his party’s performance in office over the past two years. It’s why his political career will be short, ending this Tuesday, and not be sweet.
So Melancon is the one “distorting” his opponents position, and meanwhile your idol Vitter is pushing TV ads with mean, dark Mexicans receiving giant novelty checks and limo rides from Melancon. But then again, perhaps in your mind there is no distortion, and Melancon and Obama truly are standing next to the border helping drugpushers over the fence and handing them giant checks as they dive into limos, presumably headed to the nearest ACORN safehouse.
ReplyDeleteThen again, if you are as deep in the bubble as Jeff Sadow, you probably think Obama has a arch-liberal agenda that has “internal contradictions of liberalism” (that is, Jeff’s wild imagination of what constitutes “liberalism”) and how it “poorly matches to reality compared to conservatism” and is “invalid”(?) of the ideas associated with Dems. That’s why when Clinton was around, the economy tanked, and when W took over, the economy soared until Obama ruined it with his novelty-checks-to-Mexicans policy. Thankfully, Jeff is always ready to set us straight.
In reality, Obama is a middle-of-the-road liberal whose position is eerily similar to Reagan’s on all the important issues. Which is unfortunate, because we could really use some taxes to pay off this irresponsible amount of debt we have right now. (Actually, Bush Sr and Thatcher and Reagan were more than willing to raise taxes when needed, they didn’t just pout and shriek like today’s neocons). The principals of conservatism mean nothing to conservatives. You aren’t even honest or mature or frankly honorable enough to say what spending you would cut. You won’t even have a mature discussion about the bloated and wasteful military budget (without it quickly degenerating into typical neocon hysterics).
But in your little bubble world, it is the Dems who ran up the debt. You’ve already willfully forgotten your own “conservative” George W and the trillions in debt he traded for short term political capital that has long since evaporated. And now you want to increase the deficit by removing health care reform and gifting trillions we don’t have on the richest tiny fraction of the population. We simply don’t have more money to throw at your pet projects that have already proven to be absolute failures. Listening to you anti-Social Security types act like you are long-time defenders of it is even more rich humor. The rest of your tripe is just the same tired lies and mischaracterizations born of a fertile imagination (Dems think government should run the economy, putting SS in stocks will make us all rich, yada yada).