The last thing I want is for Alan Simpson to depart from the Catfood Commission. He is such a perfect embodiment of it's ignorant, mean-spirited mendacity that if he didn't exist, atheists would be praying 24/7 for his creation.
Yet, I also think that it's great that people are calling for his ouster. It's the best possible way to bring heat to bear on the commission itself. Could it go too far, and get rid of him, leaving the commission free to do its dirty work? Possibly, given his latest outrage, attacking veterans:
The system that automatically awards disability benefits to some veterans because of concerns about Agent Orange seems contrary to efforts to control federal spending, the Republican co-chairman of President Barack Obama's deficit commission said Tuesday....
"The irony (is) that the veterans who saved this country are now, in a way, not helping us to save the country in this fiscal mess," said Simpson, an Army veteran who was once chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee.
But, that's the kind of warm and cuddly guy that Simpson's always been. And my bet remains that the more we push to get him ousted, the more he'll dig his heels in--and more importantly, the more Obama will do the same. While this dynamic usually works against us, this time could be different. This time it could work to heighten the public awareness of the grand theft being planned, which could in turn make it much harder to pull off.
It was just about a year ago that we were hearing stories about President Obama's intention to escalate the war in Afghanistan. Again. The president's most ardent defenders insisted that we shouldn't listen to unnamed and anonymous sources, and should instead wait and see what happened. And then when he escalated, pretty much as had been reported, we were told that it was the right move, and we should support it. The same dynamic played out with the public option. For months, while it became increasingly apparent that the president wouldn't fight for a public option, we were told that he kept saying he supported one, and we didn't know what was going on behind the scenes. When the public option was punted, we were told that it never had been all that important, anyway, and the health insurance bill that was passed was all kinds of wonderful, so we should just be appreciative and grateful.
The same dynamic is playing out with the Catfood Commission. We are being told not to worry, and that Social Security won't be gutted, and it's just an advisory committee, and on and on. And it seems likely that there is an element of truth in the defense, but only an element. It doesn't seem likely that Social Security will be gutted, but don't be surprised if it is incrementally stripped down. An older retirement age. Less benefits. Things that can be defended by those reflexively inclined to defend. We'll hear that it wasn't as bad as we'd feared, so we should accept it and support it. But as with the incremental rollback of reproductive rights that was folded into the health insurance bill, it's the momentum that will matter most. Democrats buying into Republican framings. Democrats leading a movement backwards. Democrats refusing to stand on principle, on issues that should be core Democratic principles.
Simpson's presence in the mix needs to be seen in the light of this now-clear pattern of betrayal by Barack Obama and his allies. (Still think that sort of language is too tough? Check out glacierpeaks in quick hits pointing to a UK Guardian commentary on Tony Blair's just-released memoirs, titled "Blair the zealot: a mindset closer to a pathology than politics".)
Simpson's presence is a strategic gift to us, and the gift is only as good as our attacks on him make it.
So, by all means, let's call for Simpson to go. The worst that could happen is that he's actually forced to leave. And then we'll just have to go after all the rest of them, calling them "Simpson clones."
Which they are.
p.s. Simpson's latest embarassing dust-up with a real Social Secruty expert is chronicled by Ryan Grim at Huffpo: "Alan Simpson Calls Recipient Of Angry Letter". The expert is Merton Bernstein:
Last week, Social Security advocates learned something they had long suspected. Arguments for cutting Social Security aren't really about economics or the deficit. They're all about waging war on social services.
The crazy uncle may not be an archetype in the Jungian sense, but he's certainly an American cultural archetype. He lives in his own little world, but he's part of the family (a senior member, in fact) and he insists on inflicting his world on everyone else whenever he gets his chance. The family tolerates him because he's family (and senior member, don't forget!), tries not to hurt his feelings (because it will only make him crazier and louder) and strives to redirect his attention in harmless directions. When all else fails, they lock him in the attic for a few days. If the family's rich, they send him to Florida. If he's rich, they try to have him committed.
Alan Simpson is symptomatic of everything that's wrong with America. He's a crazy uncle, of course. But that's not the problem. The problem is, no one tries to contain his craziness or limit it in any way. To the contrary, his craziness is not just encouraged, but celebrated. It's normal. "A feature, not a bug," as they say in the trade.
Yesterday, digby wrote a post about Simpson's craziness. She hit all the high notes:
The problem with Alan Simpson's comments is bigger than the fact that he said "tits" and insulted women. Not that it wasn't crude and sexist of him, mind you. But the real problem is that he seems to believe that social security is some kind of welfare program for lazy old bastards who should either be rich or set out on an ice floe. Here's what he said:
I've made some plenty smart cracks about people on Social Security who milk it to the last degree. You know 'em too. It's the same with any system in America. We've reached a point now where it's like a milk cow with 310 million tits!
He's been calling retirees "greedy geezers" for years and seems to think the whole thing is some kind of con game in which elderly people are taking the country for a ride. Does anyone think that is a reasonable approach to this issue, even from the right? It's nuts.
Despite his puerile insults about others' alleged inadequate knowledge, and his ridiculous protestations of having an open mind, we know that he's also tragically uninformed about the way the program works.
And his pathological illogic renders him nearly incomprehensible. Simpson continuously tells the elderly to STFU:
You remember the last time we corrected Social Security, and people calling me. Let me tell you, everything that Bush and Clinton or Obama have suggested with regard to Social Security doesn't affect anyone over 60, and who are the people howling and bitching the most? The people over 60. This makes no sense. You've got scrub out [of] the equation the AARP, the Committee for the Preservation of Social Security and Medicare, the Gray Panthers, the Pink Panther, the whatever.
So, crazy uncle. No doubt. And his latest insulting outburst has lots of folks saying he should go. But hey! We knew he was a crazy uncle going into this thing. As People Magazine wrote in 1991:
ALAN SIMPSON:They never knew there was a baby boom in '83.
Former Senator Alan Simpson's greatest accomplishment in life was being born the son of Milward L. Simpson, a former governor of Wyoming as well as US senator. He's probably best known for smearing Anita Hill when she dared to testify about Clarence Thomas's sexual harassment of her, but now he's the Co-Chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.
Like so many other Obama carry-overs of the Nixon/Reagan/Bush regime, this commission is dominated by the "logic" of trusting the mess-makers to clean up the mess, so Simpson's Co-Chairmanship is a perfect fit. He served in the House from 1964 to 1977, and in the Senate from 1979 to 1997, serving as Republican whip from 1985 to 1995. In short, he was right in the thick of things as Senate Republicans helped Ronald Reagan put an end to fiscal responsibility with his massive tax cuts and bloated Pentagon spending, which continued indefinitely despite the oceans of red ink they unleashed.
This week, as DaveJ highlighted in his diary "Deficit Commission Co-Chair: Social Security T-Bills Have 'Been Used', Alex Lawson of of Social Security Works managed to confront Simpson with a video camera while he leaving one of the commission's secret meetings. Lawson asked some fairly straight-forward questions and Simpson responded in his typically abusive manner. Firedoglake has the [almost] full transcript , minus the first three lines I've transcribed here:
ALEX LAWSON: "Senator, how are you? How'd it go today?"
ALAN SIMPSON: [Inaudible]
LAWSON: Mainly focus on Social Security today?
SIMPSON: We're really working on solvency... the key is solvency
LAWSON: What about adequacy? Are you focusing on adequacy as well?
SIMPSON: Where do you come up with all the crap you come up with?
SIMPSON: We're trying to take care of the lesser people in society and do that in a way without getting into all the flash words you love dig up, like cutting Social Security, which is bullshit. We're not cutting anything, we're trying to make it solvent.
SIMPSON: It'll go broke in the year 2037.
So, why exactly is the question about adequacy "crap"? And why does President civility have someone who spouts off like Simpson co-chairing his commission? Maybe Obama's commitment to civility isn't really all it's cracked up to be? Fierce advocate, much?
But, moving onto substance, Simpson claims, "We're not cutting anything, we're trying to make it solvent", which if true would mean that they were looking exclusively at ways to increase revenues. One obvious way to do that would be to raise the cap, and tax everyone's income equally without limit. Or you could even make the tax progressive. Or you could look for outside funding sources, such a stock transaction tax. A tenth of a cent for every high-speed stock transaction, say.
There are lots of options if Simpson were telling the truth here. But, of course, he's not. Otherwise, they wouldn't have to be (a) doing this in secret (b) for congressional action after the mid-term elections, to reduce accountability to rock bottom.
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