Bill Keller is such a punk-ass, social-climbing member of the elite that he has NO IDEA AT ALL what he’s really talking about. None. He just knows that Very Important People told him it’s important to cut Social Security and Medicare, and he took the ball and ran with it.
He just trusts his own kind of people. After all, his father George was chairman of the board and CEO of the Chevron Corporation. Water seeks its own level!
I guess he forgot that baby boomers actually overpaid into Social Security as a result of Reagan’s plan to fund his tax breaks for the rich? (Whatever happened to institutional knowledge in journalism?) Fortunately for the rest of us, Charlie Pierce remembers these things and reminds us why we’re so lucky he’s not the Times editor anymore:
Those of us — like me and Newt Gingrich — who thought the SuperCommittee was a stupid idea, and who also recall that the now-fetishized Simpson-Bowles “plan” couldn’t even muster enough support within the S-B commission to be presented to the Congress, still live in dread that a Grand Bargain is out there, growing big and strong in the mist-shrouded terrarium in which our political elites do their business.
On Monday, Bill Keller, who never will have to worry for a moment how much that MRI will cost that his doctor says he really needs, wrote a truly loathsome column in which he advised “greedy” baby-boomers like me to abandon our mooching ways and cast off the freedom-stifling shackles of our minimal social safety net, for the good of the country, y’unnerstan’? Quoth the old boss:
The Republican plan espoused by Mitt Romney and his fiscal lodestar Paul Ryan would cut the cost of entitlements largely by moving toward privatization: personal investment accounts for Social Security, vouchers for Medicare. And it’s not at all clear the Republicans would assign any of the savings to investing in our future. At least the Republicans have a plan. The Democrats generally recoil from the subject of entitlements. Centrists like those at Third Way and the bipartisan authors of the Simpson-Bowles report endorse a menu of incremental cuts and reforms that would bring down costs without hitting the needy or snatching away the security blanket from those nearing retirement.
This is a man speaking fluent terrarium right there. I defy Bill Keller to last a week living only on those benefits available to the greedy boomers, especially after the Simpson-Bowles cargo cult — to say nothing of the zombie-eyed granny-starver Paul Ryan himself — are through with them. I defy him to make it for a day. The “we” sprinkled throughout this bag of pus is probably the most noxious thing about it. Look around, Bill. You and Mitt Romney have far more in common than do you and the overwhelming majority of your “fellow” boomers. One catastrophic illness, and many of our families die on the vine. This is not hyperbole. This is how it works in the world. And, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, Keller signs on with the clowns at Third Way, who assure us that the real problem is that the elderly moochers are the ones keeping us from building new bridges, or flying to the moons of Neptune. Jesus H. Christ on a Lipizzaner, we’ve had forty years of demonized government, and 40 years of quack economics, and tax-cuts until hell won’t have them, and the reason our infrastructure is falling apart is because some retired ironworker gets $1200 a month? How much of a courtier do you have to be before the taste of caviar makes you nauseous?
And Nice Polite Republicans, too. Ladies and gentlemen, your librul media!
Support your local blogs, because these people certainly aren’t looking out for your interests.
Nice catch on the NPR interview. Yes, NPR is for the most part just another propaganda tool for the Powers That Be, only it tries to sound more rational and balanced. It just isn’t really more “balanced.” And its actualy relationship with reality is often rationalized.
And since it became so dependent on funding from the Powers That Be, with some listener pledges but the big money coming from foundations and corporations and the Mega Wealthy, it has certainly learned to trim its sails when tacking even close to left. When it dares. Or slipes.
I feel, listening to NPR sometimes, like our intel specialists and analysts must have felt when reading the Soviet era Pravda and Isvestia. Close reading was required to notice little, telling details which slipped through and showed actual reality. Same with NPR which now seems to think the “N” stands for “Narrative.” The Powers That Be Narrative.
#FailNPR should be a Twitter feed, except I don’t do Twitter.
In 1977 Carl Bernstein reported that “more than 400 American journalists….in the past 25 years have secretly carried out assignments” for the CIA. “The New York Times” Bernstein went on “is the CIA’s most valuable asset.” Anyone who believes that anything has changed since 1977 is dead wrong.
They who must be obeyed have little knowledge of, nor care to enlighten themselves about what the law that is SS says any more than they want to walk the streets of their fair cities to mingle with the proles. Having been born on the proverbial third base, they cover their noses when confronted with what the “enlightenment” founding fathers referred to as the mob.
We smelly masses do not deserve to live among them, only to clean up after them and to nanny their progeny. We so awfully do hope they tell us what is good for us. We are ignorant of serious matters and beg for the crumbs of their wisdom.
Cutting Social Security is THEFT, plain and simple. We, the people, PAID FOR IT. Politicians spent it and don’t want to raise taxes on the rich. WE ARE BEING ROBBED
10leggedshadow, you’re 100% correct. The ironic part is that “We, the people,” bought the robber the gun, paid him a huge salary to rob us, and then granted him legal immunity after he’s taken our money. Are “We, the people,” stupid or what?