[Industrialblog,
March 13, 2005]
Are the Republicans blowing it?
Yes. Two reasons:
1. Bankruptcy bill.
2. Social security.
Here's your chance, Democrats. You've been handed two big hot-button issues. Grab 'em and run.
1. Your angle on the bankruptcy bill ... well, usury is a real thing. Debts must be able to be paid back at reasonable interest rates. The credit card companies, I believer, run a scam where a late payment jacks up your rate to 27%, which is an incredibly difficult rate of interest to pay anything back. That drives your credit balance over the limit, which incurs some kind of regular fee, $35-50. Now you're first $50 goes to fees, the next ton goes to interest, and eventually you're looking at the principle. Bullshit. It's predation by banks, and it needs to be stopped.
2. Social Security. I don't know the Dems' angle, but I don't believe for a moment that "private accounts" are going to do what they promise. Reason: Similar to above: fees. Various kinds of management fees and fund fees and such. Plus, that's a lot of money sitting around just begging to be stolen. I could be proven wrong. But we've had scandals on Wall Street on market-timing and research-report analysis that involved every single major brokerage. I see a scandal coming in 20 years where the brokerage houses esssentially stole the money. Then Congress will let them off the hook, like the S&L scandal.
1. Bankruptcy bill.
2. Social security.
Here's your chance, Democrats. You've been handed two big hot-button issues. Grab 'em and run.
1. Your angle on the bankruptcy bill ... well, usury is a real thing. Debts must be able to be paid back at reasonable interest rates. The credit card companies, I believer, run a scam where a late payment jacks up your rate to 27%, which is an incredibly difficult rate of interest to pay anything back. That drives your credit balance over the limit, which incurs some kind of regular fee, $35-50. Now you're first $50 goes to fees, the next ton goes to interest, and eventually you're looking at the principle. Bullshit. It's predation by banks, and it needs to be stopped.
2. Social Security. I don't know the Dems' angle, but I don't believe for a moment that "private accounts" are going to do what they promise. Reason: Similar to above: fees. Various kinds of management fees and fund fees and such. Plus, that's a lot of money sitting around just begging to be stolen. I could be proven wrong. But we've had scandals on Wall Street on market-timing and research-report analysis that involved every single major brokerage. I see a scandal coming in 20 years where the brokerage houses esssentially stole the money. Then Congress will let them off the hook, like the S&L scandal.
Kind of like payroll taxes now, where if you believe that people my age are going to see any meaningful amount of what was taken from us, you should roll up and sell whatever it is that you're smoking?
As someone my age put it in, I believe, a wsj op-ed: people my age are about as likely to believe in social security as they are to believe in the Easter Bunny, and with about as good reason.
The Dem's angle, in any event, is "here seniors, have more working people's money and vote for us!" Kind of hard to package that one well except to seniors.
Both parties actively court the seniors (well - because they consistently vote, mainly)
I'm not sure Republicans have any real room to talk about issues of financial responsibility anymore, either.
Actually - I'm sure they don't.
Don't get me wrong - I really do miss the old days when the Repubs were the party of small government and financial responsbility.
But that's sadly in the past- currently, making Bush's tax cuts permanent (everything else be damned!) is the clearly stated and aknowledged chief financial goal of the GOP.
Republican Senator McCain got ridiculed by Congressional GOP leadership and had his credentials as a both a Republican and a patriot challenged last year link here for making the wacky assertion that we might need to raise taxes sometime soon because:
a) ballooning national debt is a not a good thing and
b) fighting 2 wars costs lots of money
McCain summed it up best:
".....nothing we are called upon to do comes close to matching the heroism of our troops. All we are called upon to do is to not spend our nation into bankruptcy while our soldiers risk their lives. I fondly remember a time when real Republicans stood for fiscal responsibility."
I remember that time too and I miss it. As it stands, neither party can credibly claim to care a whit about financial responsbility - and that doesn't bode well.
You nailed it, Mike. Both parties seem to have given up. The Dems have an issue here that's a winner. It just takes leadership.
And a complete rejection of everything that they stand for.
Democrats are just wanna-be socialists. If they tried to be the party of fiscal responsibility (note: fiscal responsibility does not consist of spending ever more but covering it with ever higher taxes, it consists in not spending money), they'd have to give up the very core of their dream: the cradle-to-grave nanny state.
But there are rumblings within the republican party; we may yet see some fiscal responsibility. I do hope so, at least.