The Swift and The Desperate

So long, Swifties!

I’m actually quite pleased that the Republican hatchet squad has now hired some of the PR hacks that were behind the Swift Boat Veterans to attack those geezer commies over at the AARP.

I’ll tell you why I’m so pleased in a moment. First an excerpt from the way the New York Times is reporting the matter:

Taking its cues from the success of last year's Swift Boat veterans' campaign in the presidential race, a conservative lobbying organization has hired some of the same consultants to orchestrate attacks on one of President Bush's toughest opponents in the battle to overhaul Social Security.

The lobbying group, USA Next, which has poured millions of dollars into Republican policy battles, now says it plans to spend as much as $10 million on commercials and other tactics assailing AARP, a lobby opposing the private investment accounts at the center of Bush's plan…

To help set strategy, the group has hired Chris LaCivita, a former Marine who advised the Swift Vets and POWs for Truth, formerly known as the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, on its media campaign and helped write their potent commercials. He earned more than $30,000 for his work, campaign finance filings show.

Officials said the group was also seeking to hire Rick Reed, a partner at Stevens Reed Curcio & Potholm, a firm hired by the Swift Vets and paid more than $276,000 to do media production, records show.

I’m laughing so hard, I’m having trouble typing this. Look out Granny, the jig is up! Only a matter of days now before the whole Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy is unmasked. That whole scam involving the AARP, the AAA and Motel 8 where billions of dollars (no doubt skimmed from the Oil-for-Food scandal) are getting kickbacked in the form of room discounts and reduced ticket prices at Disneyland. Put down those oxygen tanks and bingo cards and come out with your hands up! (Photo below: Via Josh Marshall, it's a screen capture from the American Spectator site of an ad from the pro-Bush Next Usa lobby).

Seriously now… this maneuver to start tarring the AARP on behalf of the Wall Street stock brokerages is gonna backfire big time. Americans can be stampeded into lots of stupid political positions, but they ain’t that dumb. Hiring the Swifty consultants to trash the AARP is about as smart as drilling holes in your boat.

Here's what re-animated cadaver Art Linkletter - the new head of  the right-wing lobbying group USA Next -- says about the AARP:

But first, I’d like to ask some blunt questions: Do you want more taxes taken out of your earnings? Do you want more unelected bureaucrats taking over more details of your life and your family’s life? Do you want federal regulators making your health choices, instead of you, your family, and your doctor? Do you want government regulators to control the investment and retirement decisions of your family, instead of you?

If you answered “Yes,” then AARP is your group. They continuously work to create high taxes, big, invasive, bloated government, herds of regulators, and dependency of citizens on unelected bureaucrats.

Shameful old fart Art Linkletter. (By the way, I appeared on his Kids Say The Darndest Things TV show as a five year old in way back in 1956. Art must be about 107 years old by now).

This two-bit smear on the AARP should be seen as nothing more or less than what it is --- a sign of desperation by a White House that has married itself to a loser issue. (And a sweet comeuppance, also, for the AARP which was craven enough to have signed onto Bush's failed trillion-dollar Medicare "reform" program").

Social Security is a system that basically works… and just about everyone knows it. They also know that the stock market is an unattractive and indecipherable gamble to most people and they are not willing to put their only guaranteed benefit into play. If the system threatens to run out of money, then we can lift the cap on the wealthy and let them pay in the same percentage of their earnings as janitors and orderlies.

The President is having a tussle just lining up his own squad of Republican Senators on his privatization scheme (McCain was all over the air on Sunday saying he would prefer a compromise solution with Democrats). Deploying Lee Atwater-type tactics to demonize the AARP is hardly going to galvanize support for the White House.

Sailors, don your life jackets!

Comments

[Mork]

Marc - I wish I could share your optimism. But after all that the American people have sucked up from these slimebags, I can't work out why it would be this that tips them off, when everything that's happened so far has manifestly failed to do so.

[richard lo cicero]

The reason the Swifties will fail big time is simple. AARP has money and political favors and will not allow a bunch of political hacks to curb all the moolah they make on insurance and travel services. Besides, the head of AARPhas to feel betrayed after caving in on the drug bill. The Bushies are now sinking in the polls and by this time next year all the talk about schrub being a "transformational" president willbe seen as the sick joke that it is!

[Marc Davidson]

Right, Richard. It wasn't that long ago that AARP was shilling for the administration's disastrous budget-busting, corporate-giveaway Medicare reform bill. After having alienated a lot of its constituency, the sycophantic AARP now finds itself attacked by its former partners in crime. If you deal with the devil you'll end up paying for it later. Maybe this will be be a blow, as Marc predicts, to the devil, but heres hoping that the minions take a hit as well.

[GMRoper]

Marc: "Hiring the Swifty consultants to trash the AARP is about as smart as drilling holes in your boat."

First, Marc gets it right, but I notice that some in the Media (major and minor media types)conflate the Swiftie CONSULTANTS with the swifties themselves.

Second, as far as drilling holes goes, that's kinda like what the Dems did with Kerry. So, brilliance, or lack thereof can be a problem with both sides.

Cheers

[reg]

FYI - Josh Marshall/Talking Points Memo is doing an incredible job of focusing his energies on this issue. It's a great example of the potential for a blog to rise above the scatter shot run-and-gun or idiosyncratic (not that we don't need that too - just saying...)

Stay abreast of Marshall and you'll be ahead of the curve on the SS issue. Another "fighting moderate" who's doing essential work.

By the way, bad as AARP was on Bush's crazy prescription drug bill, USA Next was even worse. They took millions directly from PhRMA, the drug companies' political arm, for TV ads supporting that one. They were set up by the right-wing operative Richard Viguerie for precisely these kinds of campaigns and are nothing more than a front group to shill for pharmaceutical, insurance and HMO interests under the banner of a "conservative" alternative for senior citizens. From Public Citizen's 2002 report on USA's activities.: "The brand-name drug industry’s powerful trade group, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), has admitted to funding much, if not all, of the $4.6 million (pro-Bush drug plan) ad buy in May/June through an "unrestricted educational grant" (to USA)." One can hope that AARP has learned it's lesson in dealing with its constituency after that last disaster. These guys are paid, narrowly-focused operatives allied with Rove, pure and simple. Nothing else to it. FAUX News is rolling them out bigtime, which is another signal that they are nothing but phony hacks following a far-right game plan.

Marc: "...Art Linkletter. (By the way, I appeared on his Kids Say The Darndest Things TV show as a five year old in way back in 1956.)" I thought I recognized you from somewhere. Incidentally, haven't we had enough of those Hollywood types sticking their noses into politics. I'm assuming that the folks who complaing loudest about the Martin Sheens and Mike Farrells will be the first to tell Linkletter to go back to his career as a has-been making his rounds on the motivational speaking circuit.

[reg]

FYI Redux - When I wrote "this issue" that Josh Marshall is focusing his energies on, I meant the whole Social Security tussle not simply Art Linkletter saying the darndest things.

[Michael Balter]

My view is that we should see this is an acid test of whether the "American people" are stupid enough to fall for this kind of tactic, which is hard to predict ahead of time. As one commentator points out, about half the country seems to lap up every lick of crap they are fed; if Marc is right, and I hope he is, this may just be too much to swallow. Time will tell.

[reg]

POINT OF INFO: - That insane ad with the soldier and the two guys kissing is no longer up at the Spectator site. Not surprising, given all the negative attention.

But let's not forget, as these guys keep at it, that this unhinged, demagogic craziness is what they would pull as long as they thought they could get away with it. A snapshot into their hearts and minds...

[HamChuck]

I picked up my grandfathers copy of the AARP magazine a whilke back to read an article that they had on the Medicare reform bill.

The text of the article didnt particularly engage my interest but the sheer irony of the advertisement section in combination with the article did. In the back pages I found "Sail The World For A Year" and yet from several articles in that same edition you would think our seniors are living on dog food.

[Woody]

Let's see...Republican hatchet squad, social security works, AARP politics, Swift Boater attacks. Nah, no opinion on any of these. Not enough controversy.

But, for ALL you left-wingers who think that EVERYTHING that Bush does is wrong, well.....hey, I'm just kidding, but let it bother you if you want.

Seriously, I didn't join AARP because of their politics and told them so. They're still distraught over the rejection. The reason was that I never want to be a burden on my kids, but the AARP has taken a political position that will not only make me a burden on the kids but also every retired person in the country as well.

Hatchet Squad? Getting the truth out about the President's program is simply providing information. Can't someone disagree with or take a different position than liberals without ALL of the left calling it an attack?

Social Security does not work in the long run and should be fixed before it gets more difficult and before we elect more politicians who don't have the backbone to fix it. If ithe program had been set up right to begin with and converted to a funded system as Roosevelt promised, then we wouldn't be discussing this now.

In todays WSJ, there is an article writen by Gary Becker (Nobel laureate in economics, professor at University of Chicago, senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.) He supports SS reform, but not for all the reasons that Bush offers. He also doesn't oppose it for the same reasons of ALL the leftists.

Here's some snippets with my editorial additions and a link at the bottom:

"Sweden and Britain have partially moved toward a privatized individual-account system."
--I hear from EVERY leftist that the U.S. should do this-or-that because some European country does it. Okay, have your way.

"Pay-as-you-go systems are in trouble in good part because of changes in the number of workers per retiree, but also because of politically determined decisions that altered the system from a saving system for old age to an inefficient and complicated welfare system for some of the elderly."
--Gotta agree with this.

"In addition, the link between contributions and benefits has been separated, so that each additional dollar contributed in taxes pays no more than about 40 cents in additional benefits."
--Did you know this? If 40 cents out of every dollar make it to the bottom line, then this makes the program more efficient than the rest of government, which ALL the left wants to solve our problems. I think I can do better with my investments if 60 cents out of every dollar isn't taken for administrative fees.

"This excess (revenue over payments) is counted as part of the growing Social Security Trust Fund, but in fact also enters into the consolidated federal budget account, and helps reduce the reported spending deficit."
--Dadgum it. If AL Gore had been elected (wait, he was elected but Bush stole the election according to ALL liberals), then Gore would have put in the LOCKBOX for social security. (Gotta love that SNL skit on Gore talking about his lock box.) Okay, was Gore right or wrong? Do we need that lockbox? This problem may not bother many of you because you say that we just owe the money to ourselves. If that's no problem, then let's triple the payouts and cut the taxes and we'll just owe more to ourselves--but, so what?!

"As in Chile and other countries with private retirement accounts, the government would guarantee retirees a minimum income... High management fees is a common complaint about the Chilean system, although this system has yielded high returns to investors even net of these fees. Besides, the fees have come down a lot in recent years."
--Wait. We can't let some backward South American country take the lead on us in the private accounts race. Where's our Yankee pride? I say that either Chile stop offering private accounts or we send in the CIA to overthrow the government. Who do they think they are? Why do THEY think that private accounts work?
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ci.html

In conclusion, Becker writes, "So the really strong arguments for privatization are that they reduce the role of government in determining retirement ages and incomes, and improve government accounting of revenues and spending obligations. All the other issues are really diversions....Is there as strong a political economy case for eliminating government management of the retirement industry as there is for eliminating its management of most other industries? My answer is 'yes.'"
--What's he know?

http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006321

[Marc Cooper]

And the point, Hamchuck, is? That the AARP acts like a lobby to defenbd its group interest? For sure. They exaggarate and distort -- that's their job. Just like the Wall Street brokerage lobbies that try to scare the American people into shifting their funds out of a soc sec and putting them into privatized accts.

[Marc Cooper]

Woody.. one quote Becker left out.. "when asked what he thought of Western Civilization he replied 'it would be a nice idea.'"

[Woody]

Marc, either you're a fast reader of you used the Cliff Notes version of my post.

That's pretty good! Maybe Becker borrowed that from Gandhi--possibly, thinking we should replace what we have with a caste system.

[Woody]

Sorry, one last note and I gotta go for the day... I just remembered something from this morning's radio drive.

I heard Chris Matthews on Don Imus. Matthews was talking about how Bush keeps "pushing and pushing and pushing," when other presidents would just leave things alone until they had to deal with them. As an example, he brought up SS reform, which may not be in "trouble" until 2042, but Bush is pushing to change it now. Matthews said that Bush will either be a great president or bad president depending upon how these pushed matters come out. While ALL of the left may disagree with Bush on how he addresses issues, maybe it can, at least, give him credit for trying to solve them before they fester and become bigger problems. Maybe Bush is just a progressive with different solutions.

[Marc Cooper]

Well, Woody, Im certainly willing to give credit to Bush for solving the budget surplus problem. He did a marvelous job on that. He also acted quickly on the pent-up demand to pay no taxes on dividend earnings -- that was good. He also acted quickly and decisisvely on the question of what on earth we should do with all those layabout 40 year old National Guardsmen!

On the other hand... he's done nothing on global warming, nothing on the shortage of health care for $50 million Americans, nothing on the minimum wage paid out to the poorest of Americans... pretty good record over all, I would say.

[SFA]

I would like to be a $50 million American. Where do I sign up?

[reg]

FACT: Bush's private accounts proposal makes the payout problem worse sooner.

If psychopants like Woody refuse to even acknowledge that reality in all of their bluster, what's the point of argument. Might as well talk to a tree...

[reg]

sorry...meant psychophants. Although I sort of like the Freudian slip beneath Woody's psychopants.

[reg]

"sychophants"...jeeezus...sorry...no pun originally intended...I just can't spell.

[rosedog]

"By the way, I appeared on his Kids Say The Darndest Things TV show as a five year old in way back in 1956."

Um....weirdly enough, me too. I don't remember the year, but 1956 sounds about right, although I was a year or two older than you were at the time.

The show was HEAVILY and annoyingly prepped to elicit "cute" responses, as a result I remember thinking, even as a kid, that kindly ol' Art was sort of a weasel.

Glad you brought this up (that would be the absurdly framed attack on AARP, not kids on TV).

[rosedog]

Hell, “Psychopants" is a grand epithet! (It has just the right kindergarten quality and you won’t get bleeped out on primetime TV.) I personally plan on working it into sentences as often as possible from here on out.

[Jay Byrd]

HamChuck: It may be difficult to grasp by the sort of Americans that Michael Balter refers to, but

a) It's possible for one senior to sail around the world while another is eating dog food.

b) It's because seniors find sailing around the world preferable to eating dog food that they oppose the Cato Institute's plan to destroy Social Security. You seem to have trouble with the concept of verb tense; the articles in AARP don't say that people ARE eating dog food, but rather that that DID before SS and WILL if it is destroyed. And it isn't today's seniors that will suffer the most, it is those of the future who take Bush's sucker bet.

Woody: "Maybe Bush is just a progressive with different solutions." This, like your pathetic hypocritical screeches that "liberals hide from discussing ideas by calling names, filibustering, shouting down, shutting out, and so on. They only like to discuss their ideas with people who won't question them", gives a clear indication of the quality of your intellect and the value of your contributions. Dr. Thompson said it best:

"Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush? They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill "gooks". They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are racists and hate mongers among us-they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis. And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them."

[Jay Byrd]

Paul Krugman makes an excellent observation in today's NYT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/22/opinion/22krugman.html

"The campaign against Social Security is going so badly that longtime critics of President Bush, accustomed to seeing their efforts to point out flaws in administration initiatives brushed aside, are pinching themselves. But they shouldn't relax: if the past is any guide, the Bush administration will soon change the subject back to national security.

... ...

My point is that Mr. Bush's critics are falling unnecessarily into a trap if they focus only on domestic policies and allow Mr. Bush to keep his undeserved reputation as someone who keeps Americans safe. National security policy should not be a refuge to which Mr. Bush can flee when his domestic agenda falls apart."

So, Marc AND Rosedog are members of the Art Linkletter Veterans For Truth! Should have held out for Bozo's Big Top...could've won a bike (I came THAT close...)

[jim hitchcock]

Oops, that was me. So who cares?