Just say no if behavior is irresponsible

Elected officials have a moral obligation to be wise stewards of the citizenry’s resources. Since government has the ability to coerce from the governed the latter’s resources, it must do so only to address a problem that affects or might affect the entire society that otherwise cannot be solved for by the individual by any means. The Bossier Parish School Board’s decision at present to not pay for an employee’s gastric bypass surgery represents such a hard but just decision.

The school system self-insures and already is facing dramatically higher spending in the area of health care of its employees. Part of the system’s response, mirroring the overall trend in the industry, is to create wellness incentives, so that their insured will undertake actions that can prevent much larger and expensive health care problems down the road. A policy that would pay for gastric bypass surgery is contrary to this philosophy.

An uncontroversial performance of this technique costs tens of thousands of dollars; complicated cases can run closer to $100,000 per individual. In assessing the total potential liability faced by the board by sanctioning this procedure, the estimate at present ran to $3 million, more than this year’s large jump in expenses from all causes.

And the fact of the matter is if there is an area of wellness where individual responsibility can avoid huge medical costs, it concerns obesity. Almost all cases of morbid obesity develop because the individual involved chooses to overeat relative to activity level. That individuals who behave in this fashion who have no medical condition that would cause morbid obesity would expect the rest of society to pay to subsidize this behavior is an immoral request, placing a burden on others when they first have not exhausted all possibilities that they can pursue on their own.

To have a government body grant such a request also would be immoral, both from the perspective of society and the individual involved. By holding out this option to its insured, the district would create a false sense of security for those on their way to morbid obesity, a belief that they could continue to engage in personally destructive behavior without major consequence. Instead, the wise insurer would pay for programs designed to wean away people from this self-destructive behavior.

A person in such straits also has other options than getting taxpayers to pay for her overindulgence. At any time, a person simply can choose to eat less and to seek from the Bossier school system to help make this happen as with any other form of addiction. Stories are legion about people who made a personal commitment to change their diets and whose mastery of urges and self-discipline allowed them to drop hundreds of pounds.

Another option would be seeking employment in the private sector with an employer who does offer surgery as a benefit. Unlike the public sector, those in the private sector represent voluntary associations, so these employers are free to offer whatever benefits they like, just as employees are free to work with whatever employer will hire them. If leaving long-time employment in the school system is necessary to obtain the surgery, then that is a cost of an individual’s suboptimal behavior.

An unpalatable but possible option would be to pay out of one’s own resources for the procedure. It might involve years to pay back a lender or provider, but this possibility as a last option perhaps can serve as a discouragement to those tempted to get on the road to future morbid obesity.

These options do exist, so the action to deny by the Board does not in any way threaten the life of its employees with this condition. By offering incentives to avoid behavior leading to this condition, rather than funding a repair of the consequences of this condition, the Board serves both the purposes of the community and individuals acquiring this syndrome. For that reason, the Board recently decided wisely, and future refusals to include gastric bypass surgery as a reimbursable procedure serve the entire community of employees, children, and taxpayers of Bossier Parish.

In a better world Rombach stays while Wooley goes

If it’s not a double standard, it should be. Witness the treatment afforded to state Insurance Commissioner Robert Wooley in his annual purchase of a luxury vehicle at taxpayer expense compared to that of the officer of the Louisiana Legislative Fiscal Office, Johnny Rombach.

Wooley barely bats an eyebrow over the statewide outrage (here, and here, and here again, and here yet again, and here one more time, let’s keep going, here, here, and here) and there’s nothing I can add about the arrogance and audacity of Wooley except that it is Odom-esque in nature.

It’s politicians like Wooley who think the taxpayers’ monies are their own who need to be driven out of state government, but instead it’s Rombach who was forced out of his job. Rombach’s tenure in office not only ensured that somebody providing information to lawmakers would tell the facts, but he also was not shy about exploring and publicizing the facts as they related to the state’s fiscal situation.

And because the facts weren’t flattering, Rombach became a marked man among those who enjoyed and prospered from the “business-as-usual” attitude which has sent the state spiraling downwards in terms of economic development. Or, as Rombach’s office noted in perhaps the finest data-driven explanation of the causes and consequences of this, into a vortex. The inconvenience he posed to these politicians led to move to his ouster when they found something they could hang on him.

True, Rombach did bend rules – the same rules bent by others including legislators for which they never suffered consequences, the same people who then hypocritically called for his head (and who make it legal for their allies to enjoy the very same benefits for which Rombach gets investigated). And Wooley legally could do what he asked (although “luxury” items were not supposed to be part of the deal).

But this episode precisely points out the very ethos Rombach long warned about. For so long some political elites in this state found ways to follow the letter of the law (although some didn’t and went to jail for it, and others like Wooley's former boss blame the FBI for their crimes) while still enriching themselves financially and/or politically. Actions like Wooley’s demonstrate the contempt they have for the people, instead of carrying the attitude that they are there to serve the people and to be good stewards of the resources they take from the people to operate the government on the citizenry’s behalf.

Rombach’s work argued for living up to this vision, the spirit of the laws that lay behind our ideas of governance in America, not the faux version too many elites have tried to inflict upon this state. It’s bad enough the likes of Wooley stay in power, but worse that Rombach gets run out of a meaningful role in state government

Stelly still trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear

It’s not only journalists who write disingenuous pieces, but politicians as well – actually, ex-politicians, as Vic Stelly demonstrates.

Stelly for years to come will be championed by some and reviled by others for the tax change plan that acquired his name. Basically, it rid Louisiana filers of taking deductions beyond those countable against the federal income tax standard rate and forced more people into higher tax brackets in exchange for dropping off “temporary” sales taxes (prohibited on unprepared food, utilities, and drugs unless the Legislature voted periodically to allow them; in essence, disallowing the Legislature from being able to impose these taxes even temporarily).

Most people’s income taxes went up as a result of this by amounts that more than offset any sales tax savings they received. This was the original intent of the backers of the plan, because income tax revenues were growing annually at an 8 percent clip as opposed to the 1 percent rate of sales taxes. In short, they wanted to tap into a more lucrative source of revenue, simply to get their hands on more of the people’s money.

But not according to Stelly:

The reason for the ‘Stelly Plan’ in the first place was never just a means to raise personal income tax. The goal from the word go was simple – get rid of the ridiculous unfair "temporary" sale tax on necessities of life (food, drugs and utilities) that we had continued to renew for 16 years.

This is disingenuity at its finest. At any time the Legislature could have forgone imposing the 4 percent tax (for a couple of years it did with 1 cent of it). There was no need whatsoever to link it to a raise in income taxes. There would have been more red ink, but perhaps that would have spurred the Legislature on to make the hard but necessary choices in cutting programs ill-serving the state and wring more efficiency out of the bureaucracy. If those temporary taxes were so “unfair,” nothing was stopping the legislature from forgoing them.

But Stelly tries to justifies the linkage:

A study … reported among other things that we rank 40th in America in state income tax, have the most lenient tax brackets in the country, and are one of only a few who allow for "excess itemized deductions."

We therefore chose to only make changes in those two areas (brackets and deductions). We still allow the most generous personal exemptions (which we double for retirees), a deduction for all federal taxes paid, and do not tax public retirement benefits whatsoever. We currently rank 45th in America in total state and local tax burden. Home mortgage interest and charitable contributions are still fully deductible on our federal returns.

First, Stelly is dead wrong about the 45th place ranking, by about half. I don’t know when that was true, but as of 2004 Louisiana was 23rd, and you would think Stelly would be more careful in his assertions (or he’s spreading false information in a desperate attempt to back himself up). But more telling is Stelly’s use of a comparative ranking as the appropriate metric by which to consider whether the tax burden ought to be changed.

In other words, even if we were low and lenient compared to others that the people of the state weren’t paying their “fair share” of personal income taxes? Such arrogance belies an attitude that it’s not really the people’s money, but the government’s. In determining the use of government’s coercive power to take from the people, one must analyze it in absolute, rather than relative, terms. What if 40th, or 45th, is too high? Just because Stelly tells us people from other states are jumping off of bridges, does it mean we have to follow them?

Then he makes one final attempt to justify it the removal of “excess itemized deductions”:

Many fail to remember that it was the Legislature itself that removed 50 percent of this deduction two years before the Stelly Plan passed.

And your point? Just because the Legislature did something dumb doesn’t mean you have to follow (review the “jumping off of bridges” example). But Stelly has to get in a shot at state politicians such as state Reps. Pete Schneider and Peppi Bruneau and Sen. James David Cain who want to restore the deductibility of charitable and home mortgage expenses on state taxes:

[I]t is more than a little aggravating to read misrepresentations from political demagogues who have made a career of feeding from the public trough while never stepping up to the plate and submitting a plan of their own, unless of course it is self-serving or has to do with pork barrel projects.

I don’t seem to be the object of his scorn, but I’ll give you a plan: restore these deductibles and institute a flat 4 percent tax regardless of income. That may well raise more revenue than the current graduated 2-4-6 percent brackets and certainly is fairer. Why punish the most productive people in society with a higher rate? They’ve already contributed once by creating more wealth that subsequently gets taxed; why take that productive capital out of their hands by forcing them to make another, unjustified contribution to the state?

In essence, the Stelly Plan represents just another link in the long history of Louisiana tax policy that favors redistribution and discourages economic development. It’s that kind of thinking that has gotten us into an economic mess, and no amount of dressing it up by an ex-politician can change that.

What happens when reporters disdain fact and logic

When an undergraduate at the University of Oklahoma, I spent my career there in journalism, as a reporter, copy editor, and finally as editor-in-chief of the school newspaper. In the years since, I have been interviewed hundreds of different times by dozens of different journalists from newspapers, magazines, radio stations, and television stations, all the way from local outlets to those in Washington, Berlin, and Tokyo. Having practiced it and been around it for over two decades, one of the things I have learned is that a fair number of these folks don’t really understand what they’re reporting on.

Consider that most people in the profession have journalism degrees, which focuses on the craft of reporting rather than substantive knowledge in any area in which they would report. Further, particularly with electronic media (stories being brief by nature especially with television tied into visuals) there’s not much in the way of depth and their news menu changes daily. In short, unless one does a lot of study outside of working hours and is allowed to concentrate in particular areas, reporters aren’t going to know much about the topics they cover, which not only means they won’t ask the really vital questions but that they’ll report questionable arguments with dubious conclusions.

(Fortunately, informed reporters are out there and it is a pleasure to serve as a source to them. But they seem to be becoming rarer and rarer.)

The area which this occurs the most frequently and detrimentally is in stories involving business and economics. One of my constant disappointments in academia, outside of colleges of business (but even sometimes within), is encountering the amount of sheer ignorance a number of highly educated people have about economics. But it’s even worse with many in the media, and the Associated Press’ Adam Nossiter’s remarks about President George W. Bush’s stop in Shreveport are Exhibit A of this malady.

“Analysis” stories like this pose some risks for a beat reporter like Nossiter who on the beat are presumed to follow the journalistic canons of fairness and objectivity (and should also know a bit about the subject area they regularly cover). With its derogatory tone concerning Bush this might call many to question whether the stories he writes regarding Bush (or Republicans, or conservatism, or political ideas connected to Bush) in fact are impartial and honest. His adherence to these canons becomes more questionable when he does such a poor job in logic and with fact in this piece.

Let’s review the multitude of problems with this piece. What follows are his statements, italicized in quotes, with then commentary on them.

In regards to the nature of the event, the President’s visit to Shreveport: “What is important here are the trappings of reality, not whether there is anything real about it.”

Already we are tipped off that this guy is an opponent of the president. Fair enough, but his column is credible only if now he can prove this – that the president’s plan is flawed in concept and assumptions. He can do this by logical presentation with points that are relevant to the president’s argument with clear facts. It also belies an attitude that the president seeks to make up for a lack of credibility through pomp and circumstance.

Answering a question he poses, “Why not simply give a sober speech on behalf of your ideas at some pre-existing forum, and be done with it:” “It's an idea whose necessity is, to put it gently, fiercely disputed — and not just by Democrats. There are economists and even some Republicans who aren't buying. First, they don't agree with Bush's notion that Social Security faces imminent crisis, and second, they sharply dispute the idea that private accounts will be beneficial. Polls show a majority of citizens share these doubts.”

One of the great tragedies of intellectual thought in modern times is the notion now so prevalent that just because there is some dispute about an issue that must mean that there is more than one “right” answer to it, that all answers are equally “valid.” Or, another way of putting it, that a fact supported by incontrovertible evidence is no more valuable than any opinion, no matter how divorced from reality it might be from reality, merely because the opinion is uttered

This paragraph is a classic example. So what if Democrats, and even some Republicans, don’t “buy it?” The fact remains, unless changes are made, Social Security does face imminent crisis, no matter how loudly and often opponents of the idea may bray otherwise. It simply is an actuarial fact. And so what if a majority of the public “doubts” the idea of private accounts. These may be political problems, but they are not problems with the validity of the president’s plan itself. I can go around long and loud stating “2+2=5,” but that doesn’t make it so.

On Bush’s stating that funding for the program doesn’t come from the depleted Social Security trust fund, but is pay-as-you-go: “But he didn't mention what the critics say: that Social Security's trust fund is something real, that it contains rock-solid government bonds, that interest and principal on them would easily cover any Social Security shortfall, and that if the U.S. government ever (unimaginably) defaulted on these bonds, it wouldn't just be the old-age pension that would come crashing down, but the country's financial structure as well.”

This comment simply is disingenuous. What the president is pointing out is that there is no current asset pool of money waiting to be tapped. Instead, starting long ago these funds were borrowed away by government for its spending and the bonds that represent the fund have to be paid back by the government – meaning ultimately by taxpayers. These are the hundreds of billions of “transitional” dollars that will have to be spent regardless of any attempt to reform Social Security. It’s those “missing” dollars which are the problem, and others that will be added to them if the system continues to be underfunded, not that there will be any default (this shift in presumed argument being a “straw man,” common in this debate). Nossiter either doesn’t have the financial acumen to understand this simple fact and see through the fallaciousness of this argument, or he is being dishonest in his zeal to attack the plan.

The “best” appeared last in the column, because when Bush pitched his plan he made: “…no mention of the argument that a small tax increase now, or a slight adjustment to previously enacted cuts, would cover any shortfall. "Investing in the private markets, you'll be able to get a better rate of return," the President declared. Only if stocks yield around 7 percent, after inflation, economists say; anything but a sure thing.”

We get two-for-one here. First, the fact that Bush does not mention less palatable alternatives to his does not make his any less valid, nor would these tax increases or cuts be small or solve the problem. Then, the second part about a 7 percent after inflation yield that “economists say [is] anything but a sure thing” is an attempt to fool the reader into thinking the extreme, improbable case is much more of a possibility than it really is – or that you would need a 7 percent rate of return which simply is untrue.

The facts:

The rate of return on Social Security has averaged 1.8 percent, and over may years a rate not much higher than this would make the system solvent.

Except for the very shortest terms, any stock fund of quality equities or bond fund of high-grade debt has beaten the government’s return over Social Security’s history.

The projected custodial fee to be charged on the privatized government accounts will be microscopic, well below that of the private sector and a fraction of that effectively taken by government bureaucracy now in administering Social Security – reducing the required rate of return for solvency.

Throughout, Nossiter keeps trying to convey the impression that a lot of wishful thinking or assumptions are being made by the president, which therefore have to be made up for by rousing spectacle, when the truth is very much the opposite. His plan is solid, and it is telling that opponents of it continually resort either to misreporting, rhetorical tricks, or to insinuating it is all a con job to deflect the public from this reality.Except for the very shortest terms, any stock fund of quality equities or bond fund of high-grade debt has beaten the government’s return over Social Security’s historyExcept for the very shortest terms, any stock fund of quality equities or bond fund of high-grade debt has beaten the government’s return over Social Security’s history

Landrieu's ANWR vote good for Louisiana and the country

While a pessimist would remind us that even a stopped clock is right twice a day, Sen. Mary Landrieu stepped up to do the right thing with her vote to retain the authorization to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska as part of the energy budget bill. Not only did she help put into place a sensible policy for America, she made maximal use of the leverage her vote provided to win concessions for increased scrutiny of coastal erosion in Louisiana, even as her colleagues knew she was leaning this way anyway (without her vote on the side to keep the amendment doing this in, the ensuing 50-50 tie would have needed Vice President Dick Cheney’s vote to win).

The environmentalist left’s reaction to this issue always has served as a telling barometer to their true motivations and overall general wackiness. As on so many other issues these people act like the sky is falling almost any time any aspect about the environment is desired to be altered in any way, no matter how far the benefits exceed the costs. They and their Democrat allies have treated the prospect of drilling there as nothing short of a national environmental disaster that will despoil beautiful scenery, disrupt pristine nature, strike a blow against people living there, and generally will ruin the entire refuge while not making a dent in energy production in the U.S.

But the facts say otherwise:

The total area to be explored is about 0.01 percent of the entire refuge

That small parcel that would be, Section 1002 (about the size of a larger airport), is frozen over 290 days a year, in darkness two straight months (with wind chills hitting 120 degrees below zero), has little light for several months more, and when it’s thawed is almost treeless mud flats

The most common living being in the area, during the brief summer, is swarms of mosquitoes

Of the 1,500 area natives near there, 80 percent support drilling.

At an estimated 2 million barrels a day removed from a field that could last decades (these being typical estimates of those studying its capacity), with modern techniques and exacting safety standards (more oil leaks into a typical Wal-Mart parking lot per day than has been spilled in all of Alaska in the last 25 years), this would reduce our current import needs by 20 percent (although it will be seven years before the first crude hits the market)

To understand the hysteria opposing drilling, we must understand that for many environmentalists the issue serves as a cover for deeper resentments against free enterprise. To them, the use of any technology on the environment exemplifies the march of capitalism and its penchant for rewarding people in proportion to their contributions to society, and is the single greatest threat to their desire to control that economy (through government regulation) in order for them to extract power and privilege.

Too often in the past Landrieu sided with people such as these. But last week, she made the right call in opposing them and most of the Democratic Party. It’s a refreshing independence that hopefully she’ll display more often.

The Missouri Plan is for Louisiana

From time to time the issue of judicial selection comes up, and it surfaced again with a speech by Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Pascal Calogero threw some cold water on the idea of at least partial appointment of Louisiana state jurists. Of course, Calogero, having been elected four separate times to the Court might be forgiven for not advocating the system that got him there which, in fact, is one of the rarest used in our states for the Supreme Court, fixed election by district.

Basically, there are three ways to select judges among the states, with variations to each. First, there is election, either partisan or (as in Louisiana) nonpartisan in nature. Second, there is appointment, either by a majoritarian branch of government or a combination of both, with or without a nonpartisan panel to vet appointments to forward to the appointing institution. Third, there is the combination of appointment/retention (the “Missouri Plan,” named after the first state to implement it), which generally features an appointment followed up with a retention election some years in the future, essentially a referendum on the candidate.

The group to which Calogero spoke, the Louisiana Organization for Judicial Excellence, basically supports a form of the Missouri Plan. There are arguments both ways on the election and appointment methods that this form tries to take from both their best aspects. Elections promote greater citizen control over judges, while appointing reduces the possibility that judges and candidates would allow themselves to be swayed on the bench by special interests, possibly in a corrupt fashion, and may improve the quality of judges relative to those who get there by only having to win enough votes.

Politically and structurally, Louisiana may seem particularly susceptible to an uneven quality of judges. With such a politicized environment as is Louisiana’s, the fact that judges may hear cases involving campaign supporters and donors to his surrogate campaign (by law, judges cannot raise money or ask for explicit support for campaign purposes, so supporters will form their own independent committees to do it on the judicial candidate’s behalf) may interfere with judicial impartiality (one reason perhaps why both the Louisiana Trial Lawyers’ Association opposes this, because it would lose undue influence over the composition and decisions of the state judiciary).

The LOJE plan would have certain interest groups and representatives of the bar select three names to forward to the governor who would pick one, with choices made mindful of demographic representativeness. Subsequently, a retention election would occur – a plan similar to the model plan set forward by the American Judicature Society.

Specifying the groups, as the LOJE has done, probably is not the most flexible way of doing things. Rather, a commission could be set up with gubernatorial appointees requiring Senate confirmation, with members staggered serving short, non-recurring terms. The amendment specifying this could mandate some members being sitting jurists, and the remainder evenly divided between Republican and Democrats, with perhaps a political independent or two thrown in for good measure. This would assure for a good mix of interests without any one having great influence.

While those against any appointive component to judicial selection might argue the sacrifice of democracy is more than the assurance that an appointive system would produce higher quality judges, it should be obviously that such a system still reduces the chances of inferior judges being elected, where the only qualification for service is how many votes you can win (and citizens will get their chance to vote in a retention election). In a state such as this with its checkered political history, we need all the assurance of quality we can get.

Unwitting Blanco gets rolled by Castro

Either Gov. Kathleen Blanco is having fun with us, or she’s absurdly politically naïve.

I think it’s got to be the second, or else she never would have been in the position to make us think it was the first. That’s the only conclusion that can be drawn from the moment she decided to take her quixotic trip to Cuba to pitch Louisiana products even as she neglected to go on business trips to other less-mysterious foreign locales with much larger potential contracts.

Let me count the ways in which Blanco showed a stunning ignorance about the trip (and why did she have to have some state legislators in tow with her – don’t they have a budget to balance back home?)

SB 7 is a start toward retirement fund fiscal sanity

The Public Affairs Research Council often comes across as a nagging grandmother because it keeps harping on the same things -- because the state doesn't act on so many of its usually-sensible prescriptions. So if you’ve read this before, don’t tune it out – because as of now, the problem is worth $12 billion.

It’s most recent report again highlights the fact that, as of now, the state’s 13 retirement systems have $37 billion in liabilities but only $25 billion funded. A constitutional amendment passed in 1989 was supposed to solve the problem but did not mandate a schedule on which payments towards the proper level of funding would be made. As such, as the target date of 2029 approaches payments get increasingly onerous: last year, the payment was $560 million (three years of this and I-49 easily could have been finished without even spending any federal dollars) – and it was all interest without any reduction of the short principal.

PAR makes several suggestions but two are particularly noteworthy:

Consolidating administration (the four state systems initially and ultimately all systems) and creating a consolidated system board with public members in the majority

Creating a new, less costly defined benefit pension plan for new state employees and educational personnel that would encourage longer career service

And it emphasizes the latter by noting:

Liberal eligibility requirements encourage early retirement and result in the use of DROP programs and rehiring of retirees to keep people on the job. Efforts to create a rational new system for future employees have floundered.

Since it is a foundation and not an advocacy group it cannot lobby specific legislation, but surely SB 7 would meet with its and others who support these measures approval. State Sen. Walter Boasso’s bill would exactly discourage early retirement, reduce financial incentives to do so, and bring some rationality to the two largest funds, the Teachers State Retirement of Louisiana and Louisiana State Employees’ Retirement System.

Predictably the TRSL opposes the bill because it changes the governing structure and argues that an overly-generous retirement system is compensation for “low” pay. Simply, the separate systems, one for educators, and the other for state employees, are having the same threatened future underfunding problems as several other public employee retirement systems in the state because they are too generous. The current system allows people as young as their early 50's to draw retirement for most at 75% of the average of their highest three years of salary (and then many of these people go right back to work full-time elsewhere). You could be in your early 60's and draw 100 percent. I don't know of many, if any, pension systems in the private sector that are so generous.

The bill would clamp down on future employees only. It would raise slightly the contribution level and essentially force everybody at least to work until 60 for full vesting in the system (leaving earlier would cause a refund of contributions compounded at a low rate of return). It also will probably slightly lower the level at which benefits are computed by spreading out the average over five years. This will put the systems on more solid ground.

But perhaps the major reason why the TRSL has come out against the bill is that it drastically changes the governance of it. Instead of a board selected mainly by the members/retirees, the majority on the new board (which would combine both TRSL and LASERS) will be comprised of elected officials or their designees and nominees from the for-profit and non-for-profit sectors, taking control out of the hands of the organizations.

Because of the huge stash in the funds these two boards administer, and their inherent inefficiencies and past records in managing them, it's probably best that there be more popular oversight of them. While there may some trepidation at giving politicians a small increase in representation on the board, the fact that over a third of the new board will be of investment professionals more than offsets this concern. This is a necessary reform to ensure solvency of the funds and increasing the chances of professional management of them.

This bill will deal with the problem now, and reduce the future liabilities of state taxpayers. At least it’s a start and deserves passage.

Some electoral system changes for the better

Election calendar changes are in the air, and that’s mostly a good thing.

Recently, the state Republican Party executive committee approved a change to move up by a month the party’s presidential preference primary for 2008 (which means almost certainly its Central Committee will approve). It would take legislative action for this to become reality (which means Democrats also would have to approve of moving theirs), unless the GOP wanted to go with a caucus on that date instead.

The impetus for this is that as the dynamics of nomination races continue to grant greater rewards to early delegate winners, states that award delegates later find their contests increasingly meaningless. Thus, more and more states are rushing to front-load their delegate selections in the process. Last week, the national Democrats took on this issue themselves.

Bush needs to address straw man opponents on Social Security reform

Pres. George W. Bush comes and goes from Shreveport, leaving a number of newly-persuaded supporters of his plans to reform Social Security. As long as he stays on message, detractors should fail in their attempts to stop progress.

Even though the president hasn’t submitted a formal plan, his opponents concerning his trip to Louisiana have begun the wholesale manufacture of straw man arguments to try to distract and deflect the public intellect from understanding the problem as his plan. Presented here are several of them, and why they fail.

Here we have two for one. Although the main purpose of this author’s appeal, from the leftist Economic Policy Institute, is to argue that Social Security now as constituted does not discriminate racially against blacks, he also introduces two specious arguments against the plan. First, he notes that the chunk of Social Security spending that goes to the disabled portion of payments makes up a considerable portion of payouts and implies reforms put this at risk. Second, he applies the same argument to survivor benefits.

Regarding the first, the president has not suggested that the disabled portion of benefits be altered in any way. Note that the only conceptual difference between the disabled and the retiree portions of Social Security is that the disabled part can be triggered at a much earlier age (however, one must qualify with a sufficient 10-year work history and get medical proof that disability prevents one from working on a basis that could support oneself financially). The same trends will buffet this portion of Social Security as for retirees, but the same philosophical solution as for the other (transitional costs to make up the trust deficit plus voluntary shifting of funds to privatized accounts that in the aggregate will earn more, meaning greater funds left over to spread among those not shifting some of theirs to keep the system solvent).

While there is no change scheduled for the disabled, survivors actually will benefit more under the president’s plan. The dirty secret the author doesn’t reveal is that now, unless the recipient already is receiving payments, survivors don’t get them. Further, the 10-year qualifying work history requirement means someone could pay in for nine years, nine months, then dies, and all that contribution is swallowed into the system with the survivors never seeing a penny of it back. Under the president’s plan, from the moment any money is put into a privatized account, the survivors can get it back at any time.

Then there are these criticisms (interspersed among these letters), both parroting the Democrat mantra that there’s not really a problem. One argues the trust fund will not be “depleted” sometime around 2042, but only that prior to then any excess in the fund (presuming it has all been put back; see below) will have been drained and by this time outflows will be larger than inflows into the program, with the latter only about 80 percent of the former.

All true, but the author conveniently fails to point out that when this point is reached, the several hundred million dollars per year deficit being run cannot be allowed to exist. So, one or all of several things must happen, (1) cut overall benefits by raising the retirement age, (2) cut monthly benefits, (3) raise taxes on those working to support retirees, or (4) raise taxes on everybody (realistically, only the middle class and above), in order to make up the deficit.

(This gives us insight into the liberal Democrat mentality. To them, Social Security is not a crisis, but an opportunity, using the deficit as a method to justify even greater confiscation of the people’s wealth into the hands of the government. Never forget the liberal mentality is to control the people’s resources, thus their liberty, so they can control the people.)

The other asserts an easy solution to the problem, simply to remove the $90,000 cap on earning taxable to Social Security. The way the system works now, eventual benefits (assuming one puts in 10 years and makes it to retirement age; fails on both of these and you get nothing back) come in proportion to wages, but capped at $90,000. By getting rid of this ceiling, from some people much higher amounts will get paid into the system, reducing the looming deficit.

But then these advocates fail to take the next logical step, by raising also the eventual benefits received by these higher payers in proportion to the additional resources they put into the system, an alteration which will not do anything to change the system’s monetary problems. In proposing only increased payroll taxes but not increased benefits for those contributors, they perform a neat trick: they turn a system designed as insurance into one of wealth redistribution (once again exposing the liberal mind’s true agenda here). For that reason, this “solution” is unacceptable.

Then we have the comments of the brilliant Sen. Mary Landrieu, who has complained elsewhere that the transitional costs are not included by the president in his plan and here that an unspecified past “bipartisan” solution proved to work while the president’s ideas won’t.

Well, let me specify what she meant by the bipartisan plan in 1983 which she was afraid to put in print: that was a payroll tax increase, the last hike of 20 since the system’s inception. Once again, Landrieu would rather raise your taxes so she can get her hands on your money than support a system that empowers you as a citizen.

And, of all these straw man arguments, perhaps the biggest is that the president’s plan does not address transitional costs. The costs are those to pay back the amounts borrowed out of the Social Security trust fund by the government and will runs in the hundreds of billions of dollars. But the fact is whether the president’s ideas about Social Security reform ever make it into law, the transitional costs will have to be paid. They have nothing uniquely to do with his plan.

Bush need not concern himself with these flimsy critiques. He just needs to emphasize a plan with the following:

The privatization aspect is only partial and totally voluntary, and not even available to those 55 and older

The disabled will be unaffected by the plan

Survivors will benefit because any thing put into the privatization part will be entirely recoverable at any age

Administration costs will be much lower for the privatized portions

Returns will be greater because the funds into which the privatized portion can be put will be very stable and, taking historical data into account, over any 10-year period (mirroring the work history requirement) none of these investments ever has performed worse that the government’s return on Social Security monies

With well over half the public now having their resources invested in ways just like Bush is proposing, if he stays on message, the public will see the disingenuous nature of these critiques and give majority support to his ideas.