Herman Cain’s surprise victory in the Florida GOP straw poll is leading many to move up into the top tier of Republican candidates for president. Whether he belongs there or not is not my call. I will say, however, that I hope more attention is brought to bear on his disturbing defense of TARP. That said, this post isn’t about Cain, who is at least open about his view of the bailout (Romney is similarly open about his mistaken view). This post is about Rick Perry.
A couple of weeks ago, there was whispering that Perry had come out in favor of TARP back in 2008; whispers Perry angrily denied. Jennifer Rubin has the details (WaPo):
I previously reported on a letter that Texas Gov. Rick Perry co-wrote with then-West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin. In the wake of the financial meltdown, Congress was debating the $700 billion Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). On Oct. 1, 2008, Perry and Manchin sent a letter, which as the Austin American-Statesman reported, stated, “We strongly urge Congress to leave partisanship at the door and pass an economic recovery package. . . . If Congress does not act soon, the situation will grow appreciably worse.” It didn’t explicitly mention TARP. But this was certainly the topic of the day.
Now, because TARP was not specifically mentioned, Perry is insisting it was not what he and Manchin meant. However, as Rubin noted, Manchin’s people are nowhere near as categorical on this – and the Fort-Worth Star Telegram of the time makes clear the prevailing assumption of the Perry-Manchin letter: “Perry joins with Democrat to push for bailout”.
In other words, it certainly looks like both (or all if one includes Cain) frontrunners succumbed to the Washington Panic of 2008 – even though none of them were anywhere near Washington at the time. That bodes ill for what any of them would do if they actually get to Washington.
the truth about Rick Perry – he frightens the non-fringe Republicans.
the truth about Republicans these days – Independents are having none of their ideological extremism.
the truth about Gov. Christie – Once the right-wing core of the Republican parts gets a through whiff – they’re going get sick to their stomachs.
The truth about Larry Gross’ talking points: they’re waaaaay beyond their sell-by date
oh you mean “old” news?
I mean outdated. Stale. Overcome by events, etc.
was that before Social Security was a monstrous lie/illegal ponzi scheme and after it became a sacred promise?
LarryG.
The complaint about Rick Perry in the actual post was that he may have supported TARP (although he did not formally mention the term) i.e. (in the modern language that would have baffled Bastiat and so many others) that he is too much of a “left wing” “liberal” not a “right wing” “conservative”.
Your talking point (that Perry is too “fringe” i.e. extreme conservative) shows, therefore, that you did not even bother to read the original post. You are not “commenting” on the post – you are just comming out with a talking point.
As for Social Security (NOT the subject of the original post) to say it is a “Ponzi Scheme” is simply a statement of fact. There are no investments – just government IOUs.
The first step to saving people from the collapse of Social Security is to admit that it is a scam – that there are no real investments behind it. Not to pretend that there is no problem
Or do you think “denial” is just a river in Egypt?
social security is a pay-as-you-go program. The only purpose of the trust fund is to hold the FICA payments until they are paid out.
In years where FICA exceeds payouts – the excess accumulates and in years of recession it makes up the shortfalls.
there are about 150 trust funds that all function the same way.
The civilian govt and military pension plans work that way as well as Medicare part A and B and the gas tax trust fund.
I cannot be responsible for people who won’t spend the minimal time it takes to understand how SS really works nor can I be responsible for those who chose to believe right-wing propaganda that is designed to mislead the lazy…. and succeeds.
as far as Rick Perry goes – it’s pretty clear that when the speaker that introduces you speaks of “cult”religions and you (Perry) then proceed to speak without dealing with that canard… who is “fringe”.
I see so (contrary to Roosevelt and all those other people who have claimed, for 60 years, that Social Security is an “insurance scheme” with “contributions” and an investment “trustfund”), it is in fact (like Medicare and so on) a “pay as you go system”, like Charles Ponzi’s “pay as you go system”.
well it is what it’s always said it was and is – a pay-as-you-go retirement insurance as opposed to a pre-funded pension plan.
SS will never go broke as long as the FICA tax continues to generate about a trillion a year – about 1/2 of the U.S. govt revenues from income taxes.
the worst that can happen is that without changes (like the dozen or so done in prior years) it will pay out only 75% of currently scheduled benefits.
the trust fund is a checkbook. It receives the FICA tax and checks are written to beneficiaries. What’s left is “the” trust fund,
it works the same way that the Federal gas tax trust fund or Medicare Part B (funded from premiums + subsidies) works.
the transactions in the trust fund occur hundreds of times per day.
The problem is that the average person – even those who want to keep SS don’t really know how it was designed to work.
Changing SS is a debate worth having but not anchored in propaganda but rather facts….
we get nowhere on the issue without the facts at the start.
Larry – nice of you to admit that Roosevelt (and the rest of the establishment – political, academic and media) have been lying for more than 60 years. That their defence of Social Security (and so on) has been nothing but “propaganda”.
That there is no “insurance scheme”, that the “contributions” are just spent, and that there is nothing in the trust fund, but government IOUs.
A criminal deception leading vast numbers of people into total dependency on schemes that must (by basic logic) go bankrupt. People are both lied to (their whole lives) being told they need have no fear of old age and sickness (that everything has been taken care of) and (even if they do not believe the lies) they are denied (by the taxes, sorry “contributions”) the means to make ano provision for themselves.
“All that is beside the point Paul – the point is what is to be done now?”
I wish I knew. I feel like the Irish side of my family – with the saying (always said with a smile) “well I would not start from here”.
if it’s a lie – it’s a lie in about 100 other countries with similar systems and I would challenge you to name 3 countries that don’t have mandatory payroll tax-funded pay as you go systems – that you would say are better are because of not having it.
Most folks – maybe about 80% trust SS even if they don’t know how it really works but the problem is that it makes them vulnerable to the right wing propaganda and outright misrepresentations.
How SS actually operates is not hard to find. It’s rather voluminously documented…. was never ever claimed to be a pension fund …never had a pre-funded trust fund and was not designed to be – just like most other countries do not do that either.
but the right wing seems to have more than it’s share of ignorant who jump up and down about the trust fund – and never understand what it is and what it is not and really don’t want to.
All insurance, worldwide, public and private is pay-as-you-go.
.
By the way the propaganda and misrepresentations were from the promoters of Social Security.
DId people in other countries also lie?
I do not know about all one hundred and whatever countries, but Otto Von Bismark (the creator of the German system) and David Lloyd George (the creator of the British system) lied and lied.
The Welfare States (at least in most countries) are expanding without restraint and are heading for bankruptcy.
However, it is not correct (from a moral point of view) to denounce the Welfare States without also denouncing the CORPORATE WELFARE of the Federal Reserve.
It must always been remembered that when people talk about “monetary stimulus” or “monetary expansion” or “recapitalization of the banks” they mean CORPORATE WELFARE.
you don’t agree with the concept but that does not make it a “lie”.
you’re basically anti-govt … right?
that would be ANY govt, right?
so you’re trapped in a country that has a govt….
shazaammm !
“You are anti government”.
Actually I am NOT an anarchist – although I am anti big government.
You know like those silly people Edmund Burke, John Adams, Ben Franklin…..
The Progressive Social Justice ideas of Mussolini and co are so superior to the Western tradtion of limited government.
re: anti-big govt. Okay so name some non-big govts that don’t have SS or mandatory payroll taxes that you admire.
…. I bet it’s a dang short list…
“Name the governments that do not have these things – I bet it is a very short list” (or words to that effect).
I have to say it LarryG (although, of course, I do not want to), but you are correct (you WIN on this one).The only nations in the West that do not have these things are very small – the power of ideology (the ideology of the ruling elite) has overwhelmed just about all major nations.
For example, Switzerland had no unemployment problem in the 1970s yet it adopted government “unemployment insurance”. Why? Because that was the intellectual fashion (just as Switzerland later broke the last links between is currency and gold – indeed sold off a lot of its gold reserves for next to nothing).
Even some ultra small nations (such as Andorra in the 1960s) adopted Social Security – not because there was any great demand for it (there were no old people starving to death in the snow), but because “everyone else has such a system”.
Logical arguments are rejected (out of hand) and even empirical evidence is rejected. For example, British living standards at the start of the 20th century were double German ones, and American living standards were higher still.
Yet first the British political elite and then the American political elite (the American elite were held up by that Constitution Teddy Roosevelt and co despised – the British elite did not have this “problem”) started to copy German economic and social policies (not the other way round). Indeed these days, in many ways Britain (and even the United States) are more statist than Germany is. For example most mortgages are not owned by the government in Germany (no Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – at least not on this scale). And socially some parts of Germany (Bavaria for example) are actually less messed up than Britain and America now are – although they still have the basic problems (they will go down also).
The political elites followed the intellectual fashions of the universities – and they still do. And the “mainstream” media carry out the function of selling these policies (for example policies designed to keep up “demand”) to the public (even in the time of Woordrow Wilson the leading journalists were already committed to the task of “educating” the public in the ideology of Progressivism).
“And your solution to all this is…..”
I do not have a solution – I think the West is going to go into economic and social bankruptcy, and I think it is going to happen soon.
And I do not expect to survive it.
Hard as nails survivalist I am NOT.
but you know…… if the idea is that mandatory payroll taxes and social security type safety nets are fundamental flaws that ultimately lead to the failure of governance -that the countries without those fatal flaws …. would prosper and leave those countries with their terrible flaws in the proverbial dust of doom…
I realize the game is not yet done but I’m not yet seeing the advance of countries who are not so hobbled and thus in theory should be starting to challenge the countries with those terrible flaws.
In fact the Heritage folks economic freedom index of countries does not even use mandatory payroll taxes and social insurance as criteria… which seems to be a major conservative faux pas
One would have thought that the countries that topped their list would be those countries that are “free” from mandatory payroll taxes and welfare social programs.
Conservatives seem to have wrapped themselves around the proverbial ideological axle on this….
Tax is something a lot of the freedom indexes downplay – partly because in many countries (for example most of Latin America) most taxes are “unofficial” ones. Bribes (without which one can not do anything) or just extortion – local police (and so on) demand money.
Chile seems to be an exception to this – certainly if one compares it to next door Argentina.
However, YES you are correct Larry – payroll taxes are just as much taxes as any others. Yes they start off tiny (in any nation – ever since Bismark invented them), but they do not stay tiny.
One of the things that seems to have hit the Herman Cane campaign is that everyone seems to think the working poor would be hit by his sales tax (which working poor people would indeed be hit by), but they forget the same plan gets rid of the payroll tax.
In Australia and New Zealand they do not bother with this myth of “insurance contributions” – you pay taxes to (for example) the government of New Zealand and they offer you various welfare benefits (if you hit hard times). No pretense that there is an “insurance” idea involved.
That is a more honest way of doing it – although it does make Austrialian and New Zealand income tax look higher than American taxes (their taxes are not really higher – as they do not have Social Security taxes).
The longer term?
Even in New Zealand (in many ways a very free market place with no farming subsidies or endless wars – and it is also a lot less regulated) there has been the growth of a welfare underclass.
This is having social (as well as economic) effects – family breakdown is occuring.
However, I would rather be in New Zealand over the next few years (inspite of the earthquakes and volcanos) than the United States or Britain.
I do not think there will be hunger in New Zealand and I do think that the cities will burn (well they may burn naturally – due to the physical position of New Zealand, but at least people will not be burning them deliberatly), I am much less confident about what will happen in North America or Europe.
Although (for the first time in my lifetime) I actually think Canada may have a better future than the United States – they do not need to import energy (for a start). And it is a country that is less dependent on banking and finance (which is a vast bubble – still).
I just find it totally ODD that the Heritage folks blather on about their “freedom” index but totally ignore mandatory payroll taxes and mandatory health care.
Of course if they actually rated that way – we’d see the countries who don’t do that pop up to the top.
and that’s actually the question I ask those who say the payroll tax is a bad thing… to show me the countries that don’t have it and because they don’t they are economically better off.
In this country (for instance) – we do not take in 2,1 trillion in discretionary taxes while we spend 3.5 trillion.
Nope.. it’s much worse than that.
Once you subtract FICA out of the 2.1 trillion – you end up with about 1.3 trillion in income taxes – which is barely enough to cover what we pay for DOD and HS.
75% of Americans pay more in FICA than Income taxes.
the percentages are even bigger in those other “socialist” countries.
so who are the countries who have more/better payroll tax “freedom”?
Larry – on one nation I will give the H. Foundation a pass.
Switzerland – there people have to pay for health cover, but they do not have to pay the government (and it is not a market where vast numbers of people get paid for by the government in other ways – as they would under Obamacare).
So is it a tax or it is not a tax?
I say it is, but the Heritage people might argue it is not.
Of course the above is no excuse for any other countries.
Normally an index will include all compulsory levies (including social security taxes), I am surprised that the H.F. one does not.
It should be included under total taxes as a percentage of G.D.P. (of course there is a problem with unofficial taxes, and another problem wih the nature of G.D.P.as a measure of the economy – but going into all that is just too much).
re: ” A criminal deception”
see – this is the problem with the right-wing now days.
either they are ignorant or purposely choose to misrepresent the truth.
Social Security has NEVER been depicted to be anything other than pay-as-you-go insurance. It is in their literature from the very beginning …
further, in the 65 years since it was created – it has ALWAYS continue to state that it is a pay-as-you-go system and the annual trustee reports show the numbers… FICA coming in and benefits going out -and the balance..usually a surplus, but in some recession years a deficit – made up by the trust fund which was created as and has always been primarily a rainy-day fund for those years when FICA failed to generate enough for it’s obligations.
As I’ve said – we might even have a rational debate about whether we want to continue with a pay-as-you-go system or move towards a pre-funded system but we cannot even get to that point when you have either the ignorant or intentionally deceptive right-wingers using words like “illegal”, “criminal”, “monstrous lie” and “ponzi scheme”
Not only are none of these actually true but in using bomb-throwing rhetoric of this kind – you give away your real agenda which has nothing to do with an honest debate and everything to do with the right wing echo chamber way of doing business.
Oh, Larry. So naive.
It’s almost cute.
By the way, we all know that, if Romney or Huntsman is the Republican candidate, the msm will spend 2012 attacking their religion.
Will Larry leap to the defence of their church then? Of course not.
I don’t think it’s the MSM attacking their religion but the far right wackos that infest the Republican party – you know – the same ones who don’t like Catholics, or Jews, either.
Plenty of what you would call “right wing wackos” (i.e.Conservatives and Libertarians) are Catholics or Jews.
As for msm attacks on Mormanism – actually they have already started. And if a Morman is selected as the candidate they will get worse.
But the msm would attack Protestantism (if a Protestant was the candidate) and the Roman Catholic Church (if a Catholic was the candidate).
As far as I can find out the last time the msm were fair in an election campaign was 1956.
However, the Republicans are at fault – they continue to talk to the msm and treat them as if the media really were “objective” and “scientific”.
If a person (or group of people) keep trying to be friends with someone who keeps kicking them, then there is something wrong with the victim (as well as the attacker).
If fact it is “wacko”.
Like Republican parents (and politicians) spending a fortune (both of their own money and tax money) on universities – even though they must understand (by now) that the universities are dominated by people who despise everything that the Western tradition of limited government and private property based civil society, stands for.
As Woodrow Wilson put it (when President of Princeton) they see their job as making students “as unlike their fathers as possible” – i.e. to brainwash students to hate and despise the principles and beliefs of the parents who are paying the bills.
Again it actually is “wacko” that Republican parents continue to pay for their children to go to universities (at least to the majority of universities that the left control), and that Republican polticians continue to boast how “pro education” they are.
“Hey people – they (both the academics and the union dominated teachers – who are brainwashed via “teacher training” from the start anyway) HATE you, please stop giving them vast sums of money”.
Maybe ya’ll should form your own Universities, eh?
Why would ya’ll spend good money to send your little conservative offspring to those nasty bastions of liberalism anyhow?