Thank God For Monica Lewinsky!
Posted by Phoenix Woman on May 4, 2010
If not for her, a lot more retirees would be eating cat food right now:
Last week at the Pete Peterson confab, Bill Clinton spoke openly about the secret agreement he reached in 1997 with Newt Gingrich to take money out of Social Security and place it in private accounts — something Wall Street has been demanding in order to keep the bubble from bursting. The deal was the subject of the 2008 Steven Gillon book The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry That Defined a Generation.
According to Gillon, Clinton agreed to take the political heat for privatization, and the plan only fell through when the Monica Lewinsky affair exploded and Clinton was afraid to take the hit in the polls.
Jane would very much like to have Steven Gillon appear at Fire Dog Lake for a Book Salon. I’ll keep you posted.
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Charles adds: CBO recently estimated the shortfall for Social Security as 0.38%-0.47% of GDP:
The 75-year summarized balance (that is, the summarized deficit in the Social Security trust funds) under the alternative scenario would be -0.47 percent of GDP or -1.30 percent of taxable payroll rather than -0.38 percent of GDP or -1.06 percent of taxable payroll under the extended-baseline concept.
As is common with long-range extrapolations, the uncertainties on these numbers are large enough that there may be no deficit at all! A far more sensible approach is to increase growth, especially through raising wages. And yet we are being hustled into cutting benefits which make life possible for a third of our citizens who are entirely dependent on it.
The only real crisis is Wall Street’s greed, which will do in this country long before Social Security.
This entry was posted on May 4, 2010 at 8:57 am and is filed under 'starving the beast', (Rich) Taxpayers League, bust-outs, capitalism as cancer, Social Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
19 Responses to “Thank God For Monica Lewinsky!”
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Mercury Rising 鳯女 
Mike Goldman said
Clinton deserved impeachment.
Charles II said
Most presidents do, Mike. Fortunately, Americans tend to be pragmatists rather than ideologues.
Mike Goldman said
Americans don’t tend to be one thing or another thing, that’s a generalization, and not the point at all. Clinton was a duplicitous bastard.
Charles II said
Most presidents are duplicitous b——s. Even Jimmy Carter.
I’m sorry, I can’t get excited about a guy who dissembled about having sex, while other presidents have committed mass murder, waged undeclared war, trashed the Bill of Rights, and committed other acts that clearly qualify as high crimes and misdemeanors. To point to the speck while ignoring the log is called “hypocrisy.”
Mike Goldman said
Who is ignoring the log?
Charles II said
Ok, Michael, let me get this straight:
1. You’re not in favor of impeaching FDR over interning American citizens of Japanese ancestry.
2. You’re not in favor of impeaching Harry Truman over bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 200,000 civilians.
3. You’re not in favor of impeaching Dwight Eisenhower for overthrowing legally elected governments in Iran and Guatemala, for helping the French wage a vicious war in Indochina, and for starting the Vietnam War.
4. You’re not in favor of impeaching John Kennedy for bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war, for invading Cuba, and for further escalating Vietnam.
5. You’re not in favor of impeaching Lyndon Johnson for waging a full-scale undeclared war in Vietnam, killing a million or so Vietnamese, not to mention tens of thousands of Americans.
6. (Skipping over Nixon who was impeached, though not over the mass murder or treason he committed), You’re not in favor of impeaching Ford over corruptly agreeing to pardon Nixon as the price of gaining office, or of sending men in harm’s way to rescue the crew of the Mayaguez, an effort that proved to be completely unnecessary.
7. You’re not in favor of impeaching Carter over arming the mujahedeen and for secretly supporting the Somoza dictatorship.
8. You’re not in favor of impeaching Reagan over (probably) delaying the release of American hostages, trading lethal weapons with a declared enemy, waging an undeclared war in Afghanistan that led to the creation of Al Qaida, waging a vicious and undeclared war in El Savador, Nicaragua, and Honduras leading to many tens of thousands of civilian deaths, selling federal lands to corporate cronies, bankrupting the US, using the DBI to crush domestic dissent (etc. etc. etc.)
8. You’re not in favor of impeaching GHW Bush over his role in Reagan’s misdeeds, notably the murders of Central America.
9. You are in favor of impeaching Clinton over fibbing about consensual sex.
* One can say that all presidents deserve to be impeached, and not be a hypocrite. One can even say that it’s impractical to do so, reserving the punishment for the more egregious crimes without being a hypocrite.
* One can say that presidents who commit high crimes and misdemeanors as generally understood (which does not include lying about sex) should be impeached and not be a hypocrite.
* But when one selects the most trivial of offenses as worthy of impeachment, while failing to acknowledge that all/most presidents commit impeachable offenses, that is hypocrisy.
Mike Goldman said
As you say, Nixon wasn’t impeached for the actual crimes he committed; he actually wasn’t even impeached at all since he resigned first. But I don’t know why we’re going there at all. I never said anything about all other presidents deserving impeachment or not. You are saying that, not me.
And you know very well where I stood on the Cheney administration.
Charles II said
No, Michael, I am saying that statements like “Clinton deserved impeachment” require context. Perhaps most of us deserve to be knocked upside the head with a 2 x 4, but if we all got what we deserved, that would be the end of humanity.
To have impeached Clinton for minor offenses, while so many Class A war criminals have not been is a perversion of justice.
You’re right about Nixon not having been impeached. Which only makes the actual impeachment of Clinton that much more absurd and contemptible.
Mike Goldman said
I thought the context was clearly this post, to which I was replying. It’s not like I just made the statement in a vacuum.
Charles II said
The entire context is summarized as follows:
Phoenix Woman: “Bill Clinton .. reached [a secret deal] in 1997 with Newt Gingrich to take money out of Social Security and place it in private accounts…. Thank God for Monica Lewinsky [who served to distract Washington from Social Security ‘reform’].”
Mike: “Clinton deserved impeachment.”
Perfectly-in-context interpretation: “Bill Clinton deserved to be impeached for engaging in politics.”
I actually gave you the benefit of the doubt by connecting the impeachment to Bill Clinton’s dissembling, because–taken perfectly in context– your comment makes no sense at all.
Mike Goldman said
Okay, Charles, if almost every president deserves impeachment by your own statement, is Clinton the special exception, or is this whole argument a waste of time?
Charles II said
Mike, I said at the beginning that probably most presidents deserve impeachment, but that Americans are pragmatists who understand that giving people what they deserve often does not deliver a desirable outcome.
My view is that, after that, not much was said.
David W. said
Accepting a two percent diversion into personal retirement accounts in exchange for raising the wage cap and increases in other taxes to make good on the obligation owed to the social security trust fund is a compromise to be sure, but not a bad one. That’s the gist of what Gillon was saying the deal was, as far as I can tell.
Charles II said
David, why should we need to compromise over what is indisputably an essential program? Are the rich not getting rich fast enough? Your proposal sounds like so many Democratic congressional actions lately: surrender on any negotiating points before entering the negotiation.
Phoenix Woman said
Exactly.
David W. said
Charles, I was commenting on what Gillon said the deal was between Gingrich and Clinton. The value of a retirement savings account for those making less than 25K a year is minimal at best, but I can see it as something offered to those making upwards of 75K, *if* in exchange you get a stronger social security system for those who need it most, the working poor.
As for not surrendering, ask yourself who benefits from such a stance. Hint: it isn’t reasonable people, but ideologues who would prefer to see deadlock and someone handy to blame it on.
Charles II said
David says, “As for not surrendering, ask yourself who benefits from such a stance.”
Usually the party that knows what it’s doing and intends to do it. That’s why FDR refused to surrender to the conservatives of his era, why Lyndon Johnson bulldozed the conservatives of his era on civil rights, and so on. Since Washington Democrats of this era have no clue what they’re doing, they imagine that compromise with today’s destructive, corrupt, and often insane conservatives is being reasonable. It’s not.
There is no fundamental problem with Social Security, a fact that was brought out fifteen years ago in Business Week and has not changed since. The problem is that the US is growing too slowly, which in turn is due to the fact that it wastes enormous amounts of money on inefficient medical care and “defense,” the fact that it fails to invest properly in research, education, and other future-oriented activities, and the fact that it allows corporations to write its laws, resulting in economic debacles like the financial crisis and the Deep Horizons spill, debacles whose costs are socialized while profits are privatized.
Again, the economic analysis has been done. There is no reason why Social Security cannot be made solvent indefinitely without touching benefits. For that matter, there’s no reason why Social Security should not be allowed to borrow from general revenues while the demographic bulge passes: after all, general revenues borrowed from Social Security to fund the Reagan and Bush tax cuts. Let the rich pay their fair share for once.
V.E.G. said
Monica Lewinsky a Jewish girl did love Bill Clinton, a gentile. Thank God, she did not marry him! A Jewish girl fell in love with a gentile man is not a new phenomenon. Dennis Wayne Blum and his half-brother hero James Frederick Fayard, III has a descendant of a Jewish woman and a gentile man!
Charles II said
Not to mention King David.
Granted, gentile girl Ruth, Jewish man Boaz, but given that Judaism defines Jewishness as flowing from the mother, it’s probably even more pertinent.
Besides, King David is probably even better known than Monica.