Via Instapundit, the latest on
one of those little issues prioritized even below the ones Mr. Ramirez lists:
Social Security Administration report shows new trust fund depletion dates.
A Social Security trust fund used to pay retirement benefits may run out in late 2032, three months earlier than what had been projected last June, according to the new Social Security Administration annual trustees report released Tuesday.
Social Security uses incoming revenue from payroll taxes to pay benefits. When benefit payments exceed payroll tax income, the program relies on the trust funds to help make up the shortfall.
The report said that if the fund is depleted as projected, Social Security will only be able to pay 78% of retirement benefits.
As you may have noticed, the pols running for the US Senate this year will be in office
when the "trust fund" runs out. So let's look at…
Campaign website for GOP candidate
John E. Sununu is pretty unspecific and vapid:
Well somebody has to step up and lower the temperature. Somebody has to get things done. Laser focus on the economy, jobs, our debt and making our lives more affordable. Somebody has to protect Medicare, do better for our veterans, and really tackle our healthcare costs. And, on social security we keep our promises to seniors, all of them.
Campaign website for GOP candidate
Scott Brown: as near as I can tell, nothing on Social Security.
Campaign website for Democrat candidate
Chris Pappas: also seemingly silent on Social Security. Although he's
been endorsed by the "National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare-PAC". The
relevant press release:
The National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare PAC, one of the nation’s premier organizations advocating for older adults, is proud to endorse Congressman Chris Pappas (D-NH) for United States Senate. Congressman Pappas understands that affordability is the most pressing issue facing Granite Staters, and that protecting and enhancing Social Security and Medicare will be essential in solving the cost-of-living crisis brought on by President Trump and his MAGA allies in Congress.
Congressman Pappas’ potential opponents have consistent track records attacking these crucial programs. John Sununu is a leader in the scheme to privatize Social Security, and Scott Brown was elected to office as an opponent of the Affordable Care Act. Thankfully, Pappas offers New Hampshire voters a stark contrast to his opponents’ dangerous agenda.
“Social Security and Medicare are essential promises to Americans that if you work hard and play by the rules, the benefits you’ve earned over a lifetime of hard work will be there,” said Congressman Pappas. “In Congress, I fought to strengthen Social Security benefits and took on Big Pharma to allow Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices for seniors. I’m proud to have the support of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and I will continue fighting to protect these programs, strengthen benefits for seniors, and lower everyday costs.”
Apparently "strengthen benefits" focus-groups well; Pappas uses it twice. Silence on where the money to "strengthen benefits"
will come from.
Also of note:
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And those faces stare back at you.
Jeff Maurer invites you to
Stare Into the Face of Your Populist Revolution.
He's talking about those two "activists" that recruited Graham Platner to run for the US Senate in Maine:
The full story of what happened is even more rage-inducing than that guy’s voice. Those two — their names are Dan Moraff and Leanne Fan — met when they were staffers on Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign. They’ve recruited several candidates to run for office, including Squad member Summer Lee and Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn. They were looking for candidates to run in Maine, found Platner via a video he posted about a local issue, and approached him and convinced him to run for Senate. They promised Platner fundraising infrastructure (“we’d raise his first million dollars”) and promised to surround him with “competence and people who were doing it for the right reasons.” That last promise is interesting since Platner is now in a public spat with his ex-campaign manager, who wrote in The Washington Post that Platner is “not someone who would be good for Maine,” and a Platner ally is now publicly calling her a liar.
Moraff and Fan have a theory of politics that seems to be premised almost entirely on the idea that the “establishment vs. outsider” divide is the only one that matters. In addition to Moraff’s “petri dish” dialogue, he said that he wants candidates “who didn’t run for student council,” and who have “a healthy contempt for existing Democratic party infrastructure.” Fan describes her ideal political candidate as “Somebody who feels authentically part of the culture of the district they come from.”1 Moraff went so far as to blame the country’s problems on “establishment politicians” and name checked Susan Collins, but then proceeded to say that the only Democrat who could lose to Collins would be one who “is even more of an establishment politician and even more responsible for the problems we face.” As always, the ur-villain in the leftist narrative — that malevolent hydra who sucks the souls from working people — is a mainstream Democrat. Which leaves me little choice but to reference the “Jimmy Carter is history’s greatest monster” joke for the second time in a week.
Jeff is (as usual) R-rated in his bottom line:
[…] I hope that people see left-populism for what it is: An angry, paranoid movement with no ability to improve people’s lives. It’s not organic, and it’s not “of the people”, unless by “the people” you mean a Yale Law student with a vocal fry that could boil oceans. There’s a good chance Democrats will lose in Maine; these know-it-all leftists may have fucked us. And if Democrats don’t recognize the DSA movement for the oddball cult that it is, then we might be even more fucked in the future.
I mentioned Moraff and Fan here
a few days ago.
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Frankly, George, Maine voters don't give a damn.
Nevertheless, Mr. Will points out an obvious truth:
Graham Platner’s ‘journey’ evades accountability.
(WaPo gifted link)
Subhed: "The Maine Democrat and Senate aspirant and his apologists are marinated in the jargon of therapy-speak."
Heh!
Maine should send Graham Platner to Washington. But not to the Senate, for which that state’s Democratic Party has nominated him. He belongs in the National Museum of American History, displayed as a specimen of today’s no-fault culture.
“At last” understates how speedily Platner has validated Ralph Waldo Emerson’s axiom that “every hero becomes a bore at last.” Today’s Democratic Party, which has anointed him a “working class” hero, evidently has met few members of that class.
Most such members do not say they are surprised to learn that for 18 years they have had a Nazi tattoo on their chests. (Long before Platner decided to join Daniel Webster on the list of senators from New England, Platner reportedly spoke of his “Totenkopf” tattoo.) Few in the working class get $200,000 mortgages from their father, or have their mothers as their largest customers. (“Oyster farmer” Platner sells to his mother’s restaurant.) His sexting to sundry women occurred, he says by way of extenuation, early in his marriage. (He has been married less than three years.)
I think I need to play Elvis Costello's "Red Shoes" at full volume, on repeat
for the rest of the day: "Oh, I used to be disgusted / And now I try to be amused"
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Like Jurassic Park dinosaurs wanting to reproduce.
Kevin D. Williamson notes that
Political tribalism always finds a way.
(Dispatch gifted link)
The case for supporting Graham Platner, my Democrat friends assert, is the case for voting for any Senate candidate with a “D” next to his name. A Democrat-controlled Congress (that the Democrats will win a majority in the House is generally taken as given as of this writing, though I’m not sure it should be) puts a stop to Donald Trump’s legislative agenda, which is a very compelling argument until you consider that Donald Trump does not have a legislative agenda to speak of. But there are other levers of power attached to a congressional majority—oversight, confirmations, etc.—as well as an opportunity for Democrats to put forward their own legislative agenda, forcing Trump either to accept their bills or veto some popular proposals. And though a small Democratic majority in the Senate would not be able, on its own strength, to remove Trump (and possibly other members of his administration) from office once the Democrat-controlled House has handed down yet another impeachment (as many observers assume it will, as a matter of course), every jackass with a Kik account and a “D” next to his name who ends up seated in the Senate puts Democrats one step closer to realizing that end.
That isn’t nothing. There are a dozen good reasons to impeach Trump and other members of his administration and remove them from office—from the illegally launched and incompetently executed war in Iran to the massacres of civilians at sea to the still-relevant issue of the failed coup d’état of 2020–21—and it would be useful and salubrious to have an empowered congressional opposition to check Trump’s various abuses of power, which range from trying to evade Senate confirmation in making high-level appointments to his attempt to simply loot the Treasury to set up a $1.8 billion slush fund to use for his own political purposes. The personal, venal corruption attending this administration is epic, and Democrats could perform a very useful public service by making it a headline issue under a new Democratic majority, if one should come to pass.
Don't worry, KDW discusses Texas candidate Ken Paxton as well. And also a Mencken quote with which
I was unfamiliar. It's a gifted link, go for it.
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"Carnival of Fools" is especially apt.
That's the name of Jeffrey Blehar's newsletter, and there's not much doubt
which merry-go-round he's discussing:
In California, the Real Scandal Is What’s Legal. Specifically:
[…] with a universal mail-in ballot option, a seemingly endless window for ballot-counting, and legal mechanisms for unions and organizers to harvest (and later “cure”) ballots, California’s system is a black box to everyone except well-informed organizers and jaded electoral analysts — almost as if it were intentionally designed to fuel paranoia. It wasn’t, at least not at first: California’s horrible electoral system is the accumulated result of serially stupid decisions, like silt swept downstream that eventually clogs a river.
And we shall close with that metaphor stuck in our heads.
![[The Blogger]](/ps/images/barred.jpg)
