DOW UP, BUSH DOWN
The Latest Zogby poll, from July 25th, suggests that George W Bush's approval rating is around 63 percent, down some 14 points from where it was six weeks ago. Keep in mind this poll was done on the heels of last weeks bad news from the stock exchanges...since then of course, we've had either a brief resurgence, and possibly turned the corner, or we've simply had that most colorfully named Wall-Street phenomenon,
a dead cat bounce.

Mushtak Parker'sArabNews.com editorial about the US economy.

A curious article in the July 21st NY Times(!) in which representatives of the New Mexico Green Party assert that they've become "major players" because an unnamed republican supposedly offered them $100,000 to field candidates in the upcoming house races, and an unnamed democrat offered them a chunk of dough to NOT field a candidate in the NM governor's race. Major players, or two-bit extortionists? (And while we're on the subject, doesn't this story serve to underscore the sense many have that the Greens, their protestations notwithstanding, are really de facto GOP fellow-travelers?)

Clinton interviewed Friday by DC tv station-- had some choice words for Dubya and his SEC commisioner Harvey Pitt.

I haven't seen this item in the mainstream press, although I suppose I may have failed to look hard enough:a court in Denmark has forbidden a URL from linking to the Danish Newspapers Publishers association, apart from to their "front door" site(which requires a paid membership to access further). Admittedly, Newsbooster was charging a fee for its linking service, but I have to believe that the ZD Net journalist is mistaken when she suggests that this ruling is unlikely to have far-reaching ramifications.

Spain withdrawsafter deal on the parsley island is reached. World breathes a sigh of relief, as do local goats who were getting kind of of tired of all this.

I understand this was Gene Kan's blog: >http://thisplacesucks.blogspot.com

In advance, let me acknowledge that some readers(and I have so many! Haw haw.)
may object that this is a nasty ole, No-Good-Liberal Scheme to Raise Taxes. Well
to a degree, it is. Let libertarian librarians and crochety chiropractors shudder.
No matter.
And now- The Mighty VERSEN PLAN to SAVE SOCIAL SECURITY:
1. Limit or phase out 401k and other tax-deferred retirement plans. Yes, this may be unpopular, taken by itself, but in their stead:
2. Implement a 3 tiered, progressive social security tax, to whit:
a. a 2.5% FICA for incomes below $30,000/yr(roughly comparable to the 15% tax
bracket.)
b. 5.0% FICA for incomes above $30,000/yr to $60,000/yr(roughly comparable
to the new 27.5% bracket.)
c. a 7.5% FICA for incomes above $60,000/yr, capping out at $250,000/yr, or
$18,750.(All income figures are for single filing status. Allow for the usual multiples to
convert to other filing statuses.)
3. In addition, implement a supplemental Tax-Free Federal Retirement Fund(FRF)
that workers could contribute to through their with-holding, with an absolute limit of 7.5%
of the cap-out income number. Thus, at today’s numbers it would be 7.5% of $250,000
or 18,750, as above. This Federal Retirement Fund would be completely tax-free going
in and going out, unlike 401ks and IRAs. But with several stipulations:
1. No collecting on FRFs until age 70.
2. Lump-sum payments would not be allowed. Only regular, periodic payments according to standard IRS life expectancy tables. (likewise, although the plan is voluntary, once a contribution is in, it’s in till you’re 70. If You contribute to an FRF from say, age 25 to 37 then discontinue your participation, the money in your FRF will just wait for you for 33 years.
3. The FRF payments would be non-transferable,and apart from for surviving spouses who are themselves over 70, non-inheritable. Otherwise, any monies remaining in your FRF account when you die would revert to the social security trust fund. If you die before age 70, you get nothing.
4.The FRF would invest in 3 different instruments: first, a broad-market index fund,
comparable to the Wilshire 5000. Second, a “socially-responsible” variant on the broad- market fund-- the same equities less alcohol, tobacco, armaments and gaming-related investments. And third, a “Savings Bond Fund” that duplicates the general social security trust fund.
5.a.Workers under the age of 40 who chose to invest in the FRF could choose only equity investments.(I imagine very few people would choose to split between the first and second fund since they essentially duplicate each other, but you never know.)
b.Workers aged 40-55 could reduce their exposure to equities, to a 75% minimum.
c. Workers over 55 to 70 could reduce their exposure to equites, to a 50% minimum.

***
I think the rationale behind my plan is pretty straightforward: reward investment in a plan designed to help keep social security solvent, and designed to keep the stock market, as a whole, more stable and less subject to fluctuation than it presently is. Do the numbers crunch good? I have no frigging idea. But if you happen to know of a reputable think-tank with access to sufficiently bad-ass software to seriously examine the question and with the time on their hands and inclination to examine my plan, e-mail me and let me know.

Earlier todayDemosthenes at blogspotwrote-- Matthew Hoy ... repeats a common complaint about Social Security from the right.
[Hoy: I've said before that Social Security is broken. It's a simple issue of demographics -- in coming years there won't be nearly enough workers to support the growing number retirees.
Many officials have set the date that Social Security stops being able to pay its obligations at sometime in the 2040s or 2050s, depending on the economy...
Demos: Now, aside from the economics of the whole thing, isn't there a simple answer... Immigration? The west is aging, but the rest of the world is "younging", and it would seem that increased immigration is a simple solution that benefits both parties: the United States gets workers and the immigrants get, well, the United States...]
and me: You can't just turn decades of expansive immigration off like a spigot-
Remember all the politicos on both sides of the fence who climbed all over each other to suck up to the Cuban-Americans re Elian Gonzalez staying in America?(How convenient for them the female parent was the one who died-- It would've been a lot harder for them to look compassionately conservative and righteous if they were insisting on keeping Elian away from his mama!) Such an expansive immigration policy, which we already have, will have a hydraulic force of its own as 1st generation immigrants bring their families here after them. (Don't get me wrong. I am no Buchananite--I'm just saying that immigration policy isn't a daintily manipulated thing that will serve to solve all our problems, or, conversely, act as a convenient target for all blame.)
As I said, we already have an expansive immigration policy, at least compared to other western countries. (For all his apparent doltishness, the president seems to be keenly aware that 1st generation Americans will be the key demographic that the 2 major political parties fight over in the coming decades.) We are already using an expansive immigration policy to prop up social security-- and to keep taxes low, especially on the wealthy, as the social security tax is a flat tax till around eighty grand/year
gross, at which point it flatlines and effectively becomes a regressive tax the higher up the income ladder you go.
What the democrats, quite understandably, don't have the guts to say is we need a progressive social security tax. Politically untenable? Maybe. More on this tomorrow.

JOHN WALKER LINDH takes a plea bargainand is sentenced to 20 years. No version of this story that I've seen has commented on how weak the government's case was against Lindh, or even the spuriousness of the charges against him. Lindh pled guilty of serving in the army of the Taliban and of carrying weapons on his person. Lindh was an ordinary foot soldier with the Taliban, not a member of Al Qe'eda. This is a little like a foreign government charging an American serviceman with aiding in a CIA coup against their regime.
Could it be that the government dropped the charge associated with allegedly contributing to CIA operative Johnny Spann's death because they knew that if a trial took place it would have shown our guys to be negligent in putting Spann at Mazar-e-Sharif by himself, amid hundreds of captured Taliban?
Additionally, would a trial have demonstrated Amnesty International's charges of war crimes commited against the captured combatants to be true? (The Int'l Red Cross estimated that between 150-200 died in the prison riot at Mazar-e-Sharif last November.)

Just one more item, and I'm calling it a week: Happy birthday Cindy and Elizabeth!

MAYBE THEY WERE READING MEDITERRANEAN SNOOPY
According to theNaples(Fla.) News the FBI were called in to seize 3 hard drives from the local community college computer lab when someone called the Feds because three men 'who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent' had been seen whispering in the library while using the terminals 'to access Islamic materials' How the reporter knows the materials were Islamic and not merely in Arabic or Farsi I don't know. Maybe someone should tell the FBI that Netscape browsers don't translate Arabic text properly, but MS IE does. How about an emergency directive to all educational institutions and libraries to prevent the use of Internet Explorer at publicly available PCs. What do you think, would Ashcroft take on Bill Gates?

When I told Nielsen that Ann Coulter has a new book out, he replied:

'I've not read a thing by Coulter (nor do I want to), nor have I seen
her on telly. I've only seen stills on the net, and gleaned info
about her self promoting irascibility

From the July 22nd New Republic , Peter Beinart points out in TRB that congressional Republicans narrowly overrode a Clinton veto of legislation designed to make it harder for investors to sue corporations for losses due to shady accounting practices. This was in 1995, in the wake of Gingrich.

Interesting article at Salon.com Life | Celebrity pill pushers : being paid to appear on TV and talk about their maladies(and the wonder drugs and procedures they've since encountered...) I hope Salon makes it. A recent Yahoo biz article suggested that they've only enough capital left to continue operating for another 2-3 months.

A correction per yesterday's item on Gene Kan. He was last seen alive on the 29th and was found in his home July 2nd, according to the AP. Still no news about what may have troubled him. The San Mateo(Calif.) PD are calling it an apparent suicide.

You may have already heard the news, but in case you hadn't: apparently Gene Kan killed himself. Kan was known for his work on the gnutella file-sharing technology. It seems he was found June 29th and cremated July 5th, although it wasn't announced till the 9th. He was 25.

Our tough-guy president beats on his chest again: "we will use all tools at our disposal..." What does this mean, Mr President? You say nothing about liberating the people of Iraq(Perhaps this would offend the Saudis.), or about the Baa'thist party, just your this time its personal nemesis. I remember how my heart sank a few weeks ago when I heard John McCain on a morning talk-show giving a thumbs-up to a clandestine CIA operation to oust Saddam Hussein. Look at Afghanistan, already deteriorating. When our president ousts Hussein, presumably stalling as long as possible, till Summer of '04, perhaps...will he think about what he means to replace him with? It is sobering to wonder if the right question about
George W. in this context is not if he remembers Mossadeq but if he even knows who he was.CNN.com - Bush: Will use all means to oust Hussein - July 9, 2002