truth-out.org — The last month has seen six Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, bringing our country’s total to seventeen. Yet even with a federal election looming and 61 percent of Australians wanting troops brought home, our involvement in the war has bipartisan support. In fact, far from raising questions over our mission there, these deaths seem to only strengthen the government’s resolve to remain. The same seems to be true of the U.S. and many other NATO countries. It strengthens their resolve not because it makes the mission there any more necessary, or more strategically important, but because of a principle called “the sacrifice trap.”
dailykos.com — Last week, we looked at one zombie Social Security lie that keeps coming back from the dead every time the Very Serious People begin to talk in Very Serious Tones about the problems of the system: the lie that individual life spans are so increasing that it will bankrupt the system. That's hogwash, and we quoted from Nancy Altman's excellent The Battle for Social Security: From FDR's Vision To Bush's Gamble to disprove it. Altman is one of the premier experts in the country on Social Security and pensions, having served as Alan Greenspan's assistant when he chaired the bipartisan committee that developed the 1983 amendments to the program.
blogs.alternet.org — However you slice it, your income taxes fund more defense spending than the next 15 countries in the world combined (and yes, that includes China and Russia). Which means of course that as a Responsible Republican you can only propose that we must extend the Bush tax cuts, cut off unemployment benefits and raise the the retirement age to 70 for Social Security.
inthesetimes.com — Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s trash talking and his subsequent sacking by President Barack Obama is a sign: America’s foreign policy elite is starting to realize the United States has lost the war. Like a hapless crew on a foundering ship, those holding the reins in the Afghan war have begun to scramble for reputation preservers. And they are scarce.
dailykos.com — Earlier this week, Ezra Klein voiced a strong argument against raising the age for receiving Social Security benefits to 70:
I'm not surprised to hear there's energy behind pushing the retirement age at which you get full Social Security benefits back to 70. It's been in the discussion for a long time, people have grown comfortable talking about the idea, and perhaps most importantly, it seems like a no-brainer to pundits and politicians who would happily pay you to keep working to age 70, and in fact beyond.
voices.washingtonpost.com — I'm not surprised to hear there's energy behind pushing the retirement age at which you get full Social Security benefits back to 70. It's the sort of idea that seems like a no-brainer to pundits and politicians who would happily pay you if you'd allow them to keep working to age 70, and in fact beyond. It also has a weird sort of currency in Washington: It shows you're willing to make painful sacrifices in order to balance the budget, even though the people advocating this change aren't the ones who would be making the sacrifice. Tellingly, there's no similar groundswell for raising the FICA cap, which would mean wealthy people pay more to support the program.
truth-out.org — Deficit-hawk and investment banker Pete Peterson has devoted a substantial part of his $2.8 billion fortune to pushing for cuts in entitlements like Social Security, in the name of deficit reduction. His Foundation lavishly funded the AmericaSpeaks “town hall” forums held on Saturday, the results of which will be presented to the national Deficit Commission this week — purporting to tell what the American public thinks about various deficit-reduction options.
Will the deficit commission find ways to keep the public out as it contemplates Social Security and Medicare cuts? It’s happened before. The pieces may already be in place for it to happen again.
“Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors,” sang the late, great recording artist Charlie Rich. Evidently, that’s the one thing Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and progressives, agree on when it comes to the president’s deficit commission. more »
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Today is the first meeting of the President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. Some of us have been paying very close attention to the discourse leading up to this momentous occasion. For example, Alan K. Simpson, one of the co-chairs insists that the solution to fixing America’s deficit is to target Social Security. more »
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When many of us think of how senior citizens live their lives, our thoughts turn to retirement communities in Palm Springs or Boca Raton. But in fact, a large percentage of older Americans must regularly grapple with far harsher economic realities. more »
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