Mound City

Over at Tapped, Paul Starr lays out the best explanation of Social Security and why phasing it out is a bad idea. Social Security may be yet another example of people not knowing how much they like something until it's gone.

In addition, Josh Marshall runs down a New York Times article on the administration having the Social Security administration use its own resources to advocate for its own elimination. As Marshall says, it makes the Armstrong Williams incident look like a blip on the radar.

There must be some sort of institutional ethics that decry this type of action. Can the administration use taxpayer's money to advocate a political position? No matter what the administration may say, this is a political maneuver. A leaked memo from Bush's director of strategic initiatives, Peter Wehner, makes it obvious that the destruction of Social Security is a longed-for conservative goal and they are solidifying their strategy to do so.

No matter what side of the argument you fall on, keeping Social Security or eliminating it, there is little denying the fact that the administration is lying about the situation in order to further their goal. There is so little fact included in the administration's arguments that simply reading the Social Security Trustees report blows their argument to pieces.

This is not an argument about the facts, but a clash of ideologies. The media should either expose the lies or stop confusing the argument with incomplete arguments and few facts.