unusualmusic_lj_archive | Yes, I am pissed at Obama. But McCain? HELLLLL NOOOOOOO!!!!

Exhibit A

John McCain has developed a legendary reputation for affording reporters unfettered access. Now, however, his campaign has apparently decided to pursue a new strategy: avoid reporters. McCain today held a 10-minute press conference, complete with podium, microphones for the questioners, network-quality audio and a camera for a local television station, which allowed CNN to carry it live.
And where was the national press corps? Sitting on the runway 27 miles away, having been ferried to McCain’s charter plane, totally unaware that a press availability was about to take place until one of the handful of “pool reporters” sent an e-mail alert.
The reporters frantically fired up their cellular modems and logged on to CNN.com to catch the end of the press conference, unable to ask any questions. The handful of reporters there asked about the FISA terrorism bill, Iran and about McCain’s pledge to balance the budget.

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Via: Think Progress
The Washington Post reports that Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is now traveling in a new “Straight Talk Express” campaign airplane. It “features a special area” with “a couch and two captain’s chairs” where “McCain will conduct group interviews with the press.” But not all reporters covering McCain can enjoy this new lap of luxury. Top McCain aide Mark Salter said “‘only the good reporters’ would get to sit in the specially-configured section for interviews. ‘You’ll have to earn it,’ he said.” So how can these reporters “earn” a seat? Never challenge the Senator, as McCain biographer Matt Welch explained in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times:
[McCain is] very open to people. You can come on the bus, everything is great but if he knows or if his team knows that you have a hostile line of questioning or you have a long and well documented critique, they’re not going to talk to you. […]
As a human, he’s haunted by the notion of honesty and about honor and truth. He wishes that he could speak the truth all the time. He doesn’t. I don’t think he speaks the truth any more than any other politician really, no more, no less.
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Back to the Carpetbagger Report
Despite McCain’s obvious fondness for talking with reporters, his campaign, curiously, seems to be limiting access to his aides and surrogates. One campaign reporter says that after he published stores that were not to the liking of the McCain campaign, its press office threatened to cut him off. And several weeks ago, during a conference call, an operator came on the line and told me that I “was no longer needed” on the call. Though I explained I was a journalist listening to the call, the operator said he had been told to unplug me. I protested the decision, and he said he would check and get right back. The operator never returned, and I remained on the call. But during the question period, I was not called on.

Read it all

Exhibit B

On Monday, the McCain campaign triumphantly released a joint statement from 300 economists who “enthusiastically support” the senator’s economic plan. Almost immediately, the statement looked a little sketchy, given they only endorsed his plan after taking out two of the more transparently stupid centerpiece ideas of the plan — the gas tax holiday and his promise to balance the budget by the end of his first term.
Today, the press stunt looks even worse. Alexander Burns and Avi Zenilman found that many of the 300 economists “don’t actually support the whole of McCain’s economic agenda” and at least one of McCain’s 300 economists “doesn’t even support McCain for president.”

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and B1

The way this fraud was created is rather simple. They solicited support for McCain's plans in general, then attached that support to a detailed laundry list Monday. Obviously given the entire 15 page plan to sign, many if not most would have balked because of specific provisions which make no sense economically at all.

The McCain campaign’s economic team, led by adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, began collecting signatures from economists several months ago, with the intention of showing support for McCain's broad economic priorities, rather than the specific items in his Jobs for America proposal.

The statement they signed is 403 words long — and there is no mention of the gas tax holiday or the deficit, which the Congressional Budget Office projects will approach $400 billion this year.

Bear in mind, of course, that this is the same economic bill in which McCain professes to be able to balance teh budget in FOUR YEARS, but seems to have issues explaining precisely how he's gonna do so:

Honestly, I don't want to be writing about McCain's various displays of economic ignorance all the time. But he keeps coming up with statements that are just so jaw-droppingly awful that I have to. The latest is a CNN interview from this morning, which is posted, with its transcript, here. Rather than go through it at length, I'll just list the main points:

(1) McCain is asked how he plans to balance the budget. He says that the problem is that spending is out of control, and he will control it. He adds that he will create lots of new jobs in nuclear energy and coal gasification, I assume using only controlled spending. John Roberts (who has cited figures, and seems quite well-prepared) presses him, and this exchange follows:

"ROBERTS: Senator, you can't get over the fact, though, that extending the Bush tax cuts, as you want to do, and adding in your tax cuts do take the deficit number -- we actually go from a $70 billion surplus to a $445 billion deficit. MCCAIN: You can't seem to get over the fact that it's spending that's out of control. And you restrain spending and also you can't get over the fact that historically when you raise people's taxes, guess what, revenue goes down. Every time we cut capital gains taxes, there has been an increase in revenue. I'm glad to have this discussion with you, and obviously you disagree, but the facts are that when you keep taxes low, when you restrain spending, as we did in 1982 when Ronald Reagan came to office, then the economy grows. We've created 46 million new jobs since 1982, because of lower taxes, but the spending got out of control, and that obviously caused the deficit, which then caused us to have to borrow money from China, et cetera, et cetera. And that's our problem that we have today, is spending and not keeping taxes low and stimulating the economy."
No. When you raise taxes (within reason), revenue tends to go up. (See this helpful graph.) And when you cut capital gains taxes, revenues go down, save for short-term blips that reflect people wanting to cash in under the new rates. McCain also mentions that the CBO and others who have estimated the effects of cuts in capital gains taxes use "static scoring." According to Greg Mankiw, who was the chair of Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, even with dynamic scoring, cuts in the capital gains tax only recoup 50% of the revenue lost.

People. It is really worth your while to read the rest of the above entry.

Still think McCain is viable?

Exhibit C

"I'd like to start out by giving you a little straight talk. Under the present set-up, because we've mortgaged our children's futures, you will not have Social Security benefits that present-day retirees have unless we fix it. And Americans have got to understand that.

Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace. It's an absolute disgrace, and it's got to be fixed.

Now, how do you fix it? Now, how do you fix it? You fix it by reaching across the aisle, and you say to the Democrats, "Sit down with me at the table. Sit down with me, the way Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill did the last time that Social Security was in deep trouble, and that was way back in 1983."" (From CQTranscriptions, "SEN. JOHN MCCAIN HOLDS A QUESTION-AND-ANSWER AT A TOWNHALL MEETING", July 7, 2008. Accessed via Lexis/Nexis.)

Why is that stupid and dumb as hell?

The fact that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by workers, young or otherwise, is not a disgrace, or a scandal, or a new development. Social Security has been funded this way since its inception. The first person to receive monthly benefits, one Ida Mae Fuller, had worked for three years, and contributed all of $24.75 to the Social Security Trust Fund. She lived to be 100, and collected $22,888.92 in benefits. Did the Social Security Trust Fund found that money under its pillow? Somehow, I don't think so.
Younger workers paid Ida Mae Fuller's pension. Workers who were younger still paid those workers when they retired. And even younger workers, like me, are paying for their Social Security benefits. This is not a disgrace; it's the way the system operates. And it's certainly not a sign that we've mortgaged our children's futures, or that something has to be fixed.

Also

Jared Bernstein, the director of the Living Standards program at the Economic Policy Institute, said in an email that he was shocked by McCain's statement:

That is truly an amazing quote. It's like he's saying, "I just found out that taxes come from people...that's a disgrace." It betrays a really quite scary lack of knowledge about basic government.... I know he's not into this kind of stuff, but ... it would be hard not to know about the intergenerational financing of Social Security. It's the biggest government transfer—1/5 of the damn budget. I guess the quote suggests he knows about the financing, but the way he says it, it sounds like he just found out and is shocked.

I can't imagine how this will play if it goes at all viral. Maybe Social Security is no longer the third rail, but to call it a disgrace ought to be seen as over the top. On the other hand, maybe people will agree with him.

People. Please don't agree with him. Firstly, are we ssuuureee Social Security is a problem?

(1) Social Security does face a shortfall over the next 75 years. However, predicting this sort of shortfall is like predicting the weather: the farther into the future you project things, the less certain your predictions.
One way to see this is to look at how previous predictions of Social Security solvency have done in the past. If you look at Table 1 here, you can see these predictions for the past twelve years. Guess what? Twelve years ago, the Social Security Trustees predicted that the Trust Fund would run out of money in 2029. This year, they predict it will run out of money in 2041. Moreover, its projected 75 year deficit, as a percentage of GDP, has shrunk by over 20%. And all this as a result of doing nothing!
The point of this is not to say that we should go on doing nothing. (Though, personally, I think we can afford to wait a decade or so.) It is to say that we should remember that this problem is not projected to hit us for another 33 years, and that before we completely freak out, we should think about the possibility that those predictions are wrong. We should also remember that the projected shortfall is quite manageable. (It's worth bearing in mind that a lot of the projections are over 75 years.) For instance, as Table 2 here makes clear, we could make up for it simply by letting the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest 1% of Americans expire and dedicating the proceeds to the SS trust fund.

Now in the past, McCain has suggested privatization. However, this will make the maybe problem worse instead of better:
Recall the way Social Security works. I pay Social Security taxes. My taxes are used to pay the benefits of today's retirees. When I retire, my benefits will be paid by the taxes of the generation behind me, and so on. Suppose that we start allowing people to put some of their FICA tax dollars into personal accounts. That means that I will be paying not for the generation of workers who are now retired, but for me.

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Here, the workers keep their own money, leaving Mr. Scream, who had paid the generation that came before him and been counting on being paid by younger workers in turn, with nothing. (Obviously, you can alter this picture in various ways. For instance, if people divert part, but not all, of their FICA taxes to private accounts, Mr. Scream can say: "Where's that part of my money?")
Now: McCain has promised that Mr. Scream will, in fact, get his money. That means one of three things. Either it will come from the Social Security Trust Fund, in which case it will make the Trust Fund's solvency problems worse; or else it will come from Our Tax Dollars, which doesn't sound very pleasant, or else it will come from the Fiscal Fairy, who makes our numbers add up by magic.
Without the Fiscal Fairy, however, it's not just that there is no way at all in which personal accounts help with the problem John McCain says they solve. They make that problem much, much worse. It's hard to say how much worse without knowing what the details of McCain's plan are. But the President's plan for private accounts would have added $4.6 trillion to our debt in its first 20 years of operation. That's more than the projected Social Security shortfall for the next 75 years (see Fig. II.D4.)

Secondly, even now, in his new economic plan he STILL doesn't know how to fix the "maybe" problem.

No such luck. Here is his entire discussion of the Social Security:

"John McCain will fight to save the future of Social Security, and he believes that we may meet our obligations to the retirees of today and the future without raising taxes. John McCain supports supplementing the current Social Security system with personal accounts – but not as a substitute for addressing benefit promises that cannot be kept. John McCain will reach across the aisle to address these challenges, but if the Democrats do not act, he will. No problem is in more need of honesty than the looming financial challenges of entitlement programs. Americans have the right to know the truth and John McCain will not leave office without fixing the problems that threatens our future prosperity and power." (p. 5)
There are, basically, two ways to put Social Security on a firmer financial footing, supposing one thinks that needs to be done. One is to raise taxes; the other is to cut benefits. (One might also cut administrative costs, but these are already extremely low.) In the passage cited above, McCain says he does not think he will need to raise taxes. That leaves benefit cuts.
By my calculations, McCain would need to cut benefits by 95% in order to balance the budget -- and my assumptions were pretty conservative. (I did not count programs that I couldn't cost out as having any cost at all, and restricted myself to the big-ticket promises that leapt to mind, for instance. That means, for instance, that I treated McCain's promise to get new modern weapons systems as if it either didn't exist or could be met for free.)
I would be more than happy to concede that I am wrong: that McCain has plans for raising revenues or cutting spending that I haven't taken into account. But in order to do that, I'd have to see some concrete proposals from him. And the truth is: there aren't any.

Exhibit D His Veteran Record? SUCKS.

McCain: ‘I Received The Highest Award From Literally Every Veterans Organization In America’»

The recognition McCain has received from veterans groups is not "high awards" but failing grades:

— Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave McCain a grade of D for his record of voting against veterans. (By contrast, Obama got a B+.)

– Disabled Veterans of America noted McCain’s dismal 20 percent voting record on veterans’ issues. (Obama had an 80 percent.)

– In a list of "Key Votes," Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) notes McCain "Voted Against Us" 15 times and "Voted For Us" only 8. (Obama voted for VVA 12 times, and against only once.)

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McCain argues that making the education benefits too generous will hurt retention, as enlistees will leave for college after three years rather than reenlist. McCain's position makes sense only by overlooking the fact that the main retention (and recruiting) problems facing the military are the Iraq war and the scandals plaguing military and veterans healthcare. (The most recent outrage: In a Memorial Day speech, Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Peake downplayed the seriousness of brain trauma suffered by tens of thousands of servicemen in Iraq and Afghanistan, calling many of their diagnoses "overblown" and likening them to youth football injuries.)

McCain's rationalization for opposing the bill may not hold water, but his stance makes perfect sense in light of his record. From 2004 to 2006, the Disabled Veterans of America gave him annual scores ranging from 50% to the most recent 20% when it comes to supporting the group's legislative priorities. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave him a grade of "D" in its most recent analysis of voting records. The American Legion says he is dead wrong on the GI Bill, as does the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

And there's way more

Exhibit E His Flip Flops. Oh LORD, his flipflops:

It’s been about a month since we last explored John McCain’s many, many policy reversals (a.k.a., flip-flops), but thankfully, the Republican candidate running as a principled, consistent conservative, who refuses to pander or shift with the wind, continues to give us plenty of new material to work with.
Over the last month, we’ve learned, for example, that McCain seems to have switched on whether to extend retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies…

A top lawyer for Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign said telecommunications companies should be forced to explain their role in the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program as a condition for legal immunity for past wiretapping, a statement that stands in marked contrast to positions taken by President Bush, McCain and other Republicans in Congress.
“There would need to be hearings, real hearings, to find out what actually happened, what harms actually occurred, rather than some sort of sweeping of things under the rug,” Chuck Fish, a former vice president and chief patent counsel at Time Warner, said last week at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference in New Haven, Conn., according to an audiotape available on the conference Web site. “That would be absolutely verboten in a McCain administration.”
…and storing spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain in Nevada…

As John McCain, alighting in Reno today, tries to woo Nevada voters, he is hoping for the kind of short-term memory loss Christopher Nolan wrote about and filmed in “Memento.” If Nevadans keep forgetting what he has said and done before, McCain might actually be able to convince voters here that his love for the state has simply been well-hidden. Very well-hidden.
Voters everywhere are used to being treated like ingenuous dumbbells by politicians trolling for their votes. But not since George W. Bush declined all interviews on the subject and uttered his “sound science” mantra has a White House hopeful so obviously taken the state for a bunch of rubes.
…and whether the U.S. should move “towards normalization of relations” with Cuba… and whether the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Hamas … and whether the U.S. should engage in diplomacy with Syria … and whether the NRA should have a role in the Republican Party’s policy making … and his support for his own lobbying-reform legislation from 1997 … and whether he wants political support from radical televangelists like John Hagee and Rod Parsley … and his support for the Lieberman/Warner legislation to combat global warming.
And these are just from the last few weeks. MORE FLIPFLOPS RIGHT HERE

Yes, I am pissed at Obama. But McCain? HELLLLL NOOOOOOO!!!!

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