I'm back...and feel like I've been through finals and a dissertation proposal defense...neither of which is likely to happen soon, but two weeks of business travel and family guests results in the same effect.
So, before I get back in gear, a quick rundown of the absence:
Three days in Manhattan, seeing The Daily Show, Billy Connolly, and Spamalot. The throat's still raw from laughing, and barely held together in the subsequent three days of policy at the Take Back America conference in Washington from the 12th to the 14th. I reported on the conference for a local AM AirAmerica affiliate's Sunday show, hosted by Barry Gordon. From the opening day, with Robert Redford, through the Hillary/Pelosi/Kerry breakfast the next day, and seeing Russ Feingold, Joe Wilson and Ned Lamont talk Iraq on Wednesday, it was a helluva show. I was interviewed on Father's Day on the BarryGordonFromLeftField Show, while my dad, my favorite Democrat, listened. You can hear the interview here. I'm the first guest, so you only have to suffer the ads. It's AM radio, after all.
Back home, to attend the oldest niece's HS graduation, then enjoy a few days of parents staying with me, including a night for Mom at the local hospital. Note: never test-drive a seafood restaurant with visitors...
All caught up? Look, everyone is focusing on Iraq. The conference was damned near a one-note concert in the full sessions, and only got to other subjects in little break-outs of 100 to 200 people. The best post I've read lately is from the RudePundit, here. So in the interest of change, as well as speed, I'm going to reprise a complaint from this time last year: Have you looked at the Dow Jones Industrial Average today? It's at 11079, after a 104-point rise today. "So what?", you ask, "That's a nice one-day jump." Yea, until you get some context. Remember when Junior wanted to privatize Social Security. Wanted us to do our own investing, to hand our funds over to some brokerage house to manage, (and get a fee for doing so,) even if we kept the funds in something as 'safe' as an index fund, like, maybe, a DJIA Index fund (called Diamonds in the vernacular) for example?
Well, 10218 is stuck in my head. It was the market close of the DJIA on a day in June of 2004, when I drove 12 hours straight through from home to Salt Lake City, to get a car back from a shop that had resusitated it from the ministrations of a drunken Mormon who'd rear-ended it, and me in it, about two months earlier. 10218 was on the air as I got a speeding ticket, because they ticket their own (my SLC rental had Beehive State plates) but not tourists...
Anyway, do the math. Two years, 861 points since 10218. That's a total of 8.4% increase over two years. It would be much less if your broker took his 1.25 percent the first year, which you then wouldn't earn on the second year. After which, the broker takes his 1.25 percent again. So maybe you made 5% over those two years, sitting still and betting on the Dow. You'd have made the same increase, maybe even a tad more, over the same two years if you'd still been in the standard Social Security system. And that's using Junior's own figures. But the important thing, for Junior and his corporate backers, is that 1.25 percent per year they'd make off your money if Social Security was privatized. Because they don't get any of that now. That gets used to pay for your parents, my berieved underage nieces, and the rest of the widows and orphans that expect civility and care from us, and that we, purporting to be civilized, give them through Social Security.
I compare every day's close to that June 2004 close at 10218. And I watch the fascists in the Reaganazi Party, because they won't sleep until they get their hands on that big pool of money called Social Security. 'Cause 1.25% of all the Social Security funds, every year, is...well, it's a whole lot!