Department of article ledes you wish weren't so ironic, Xmas edition (courtesy of the NYT) ...
The commander of American-run prisons in Iraq says the military will not turn over any detainees or detention centers to Iraqi jailers until American officials are satisfied that the Iraqis are meeting United States standards for the care and custody of detainees.
To a new year with our national honor cleansed and restored.
--Josh Marshall
I'm not sure whether or not I'll be posting again today. But in case not, I wanted to wish those who are celebrating a Merry Christmas, both to those for whom it is a central religious celebration and to those for whom it is a secular holiday of giving and togetherness. To each of you, our best.
--Josh Marshall
Knight-Ridder reports that "An Iraqi court has ruled that some of the most prominent Sunni Muslims who were elected to parliament last week won't be allowed to serve because officials suspect that they were high-ranking members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party."
The article goes on to say that two members of Iyad Allawi's slate (the Iraqi National List) are likely to be rejected as are five members of the Iraqi Accord Front (see this list for brief descriptions of the different electoral slates).
I'll wait to hear what Juan Cole and others say about this. But from the outside it certainly seems like this would intensify the perceived marginalization of Sunnis and dominance of Shi'a religious parties that already seems to be the main result of the election.
--Josh Marshall
Am I in the wrong line of work?
I've been involved in blogging in a pretty direct way for more than five years. And that has given me a front row seat for all sorts of developments in this developing medium. That continues to be the case now as I work to expand this original site into a small network of sites, each with a particular focus building from the first -- tpmcafe.com, tpmmuckraker.com, etc.
Anyway, I guess maybe I've had seats so close to the stage that I've missed a lot of what was going on in the seats just behind me or perhaps a section or two back.
For instance, 'blog consultants'? Who knew there was such a thing?
With so much buzz and activity brewing around blogs these days and so many 'old media' companies launching their own blogs, I guess it only makes sense that a minor trade would have sprung up of people who will provide good counsel and advice on how to blog and how to set up blogs and, I have to assume, various blogging best practices, whatever those might be.
But it just hadn't occurred to me that such a species of consultants existed.
I first heard the phrase a month or so ago when a reader wrote in to ask whether I could recommend a qualified blog consultant to help his law firm set up a blog.
There's actually a sort of funny side note here. The way I learned how to do web design was that when I was in graduate school I had a web design company that specialized in designing web sites for law firms. (By 'company', of course, I mean me with some help from my then-girlfriend.) That was my way of supplementing my meager graduate student stipend and wages.
In any case, some quick googling just found me this outfit that apparently specializes in setting up blogs just for law firms. (Note: No, that's not a recommendation; just found them on Google and linked them as an example.)
In case you're wondering, no, there's no particular reason I'm telling you all of this. It's just a reflection as we continue to work on our own expansion, all done with self-blog-consulting, I assure you.
Once again, for the more than 2500 of you who contributed to our fundraiser, again, a very sincere thank you. Most of you have heard back from us. The rest of you will shortly. Those of you who mailed in checks, it's taking us a bit longer to get 'thank yous' back. But you'll hear from us soon.
We're now building the TPMmuckraker.com site, almost done with our redesign of TPMCafe, half way done with hiring our two reporter-bloggers and now busily (and I mean really busily) looking for New York office space to house our new expanded operation.
We'll keep you posted as our progress continues.
--Josh Marshall
As near as facts can be ascertained on this matter, I'd like to hear from people who can shed some light on the results of the election in Iraq -- results which may bring to a head the simmering tensions threatening to tear the state apart.
According to this article in the Washington Post, a rejectionist coalition of parties who together won an estimated 80 seats in the 275-seat National Assembly are threatening to boycott the new parliament and, implicitly at least, to support armed opposition.
As you know, the unofficial election results show an overwhelming win for Shia' religious parties. And pretty much everyone seems to be claiming that the elections were marred by widespread fraud.
So, my question is: Is there any reason to believe that there was a level of fraud in the election sufficient to make a meaningful difference in the results? Or is this just sour grapes? On first blush at least the results seem like the result of the fact the Shia' make up the majority of Iraqis and are perhaps better organized; and the Sunnis' electoral representation was diminished by their lack of participation in the last two elections. But perhaps there was widespread fraud.
Either way, there's no real way to get a handle on what's happening without some relatively independent analysis of whether these allegations of fraud are legitimate.
And by legitimate, I mean, not just any evidence of fraud, but fraud widespread and systematic enough to have measurably affected the result. (Any fledgling democracy will have some fraud in its early elections.)
Anyone have a good answer?
--Josh Marshall
I'm hoping we'll be able to dig more deeply into the particulars later. But I want to call your attention to three articles today by Copley News Service's Jerry Kammer in today's San Diego Union-Tribune. The articles focus on Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) and the web of ties he maintains with friendly lobbyists and the federal money he steers in their direction through congressional 'earmarks'.
The articles focus specifically on the relationship between Rep. Lewis and former (and mildly disgraced) Rep.-turned-lobbyist Bill Lowery (R-CA).
Lowery got tagged in the House Bank scandal from 1992 and before that he had uncomfortably close ties with a Texas S&L huckster named Don Dixon. And he got forced into a primary against our friend Duke Cunningham. Eventually he had to bow out of the race in favor of Duke since he was the too ethically-compromised of the two candidates. So that gives you some sense of where we're at on this one. After leaving Congress he decided to go into the lobbying biz full-time.
This piece explains how Lowery and Lewis then went, in effect, into business together.
Cozy little world those So Cal Republicans are living in.
--Josh Marshall
No one left to bamboozle?
What happened here exactly? In recent months there was a new storyline afoot. Whatever his previous hijinks, whatever lack of a constituency he may have had in pre-invasion Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, through shmoozing and patronage and guile, had managed to make himself into a political force to be reckoned with in the new Iraq. It even seemed possible he might emerge as a compromise candidate for Prime Minister in the new government.
Apparently, it just wasn't meant to be.
NBC reports that Chalabi got less than 1% of the vote in his sometimes country. And the article at the MSNBC website contains some choice schadenfreudious electoral nuggets.
Out 2.5 million votes cast in Baghdad, Chalabi clocked in at a rather anemic 8,645 votes. Anbar province, the center of the Sunni insurgency, was never going to be Chalabi's base. But you'd have thought there might be more than 113 voters who'd vote for the guy. The list on: Basra, .34 percent of the vote.
So what happened? Was there really any reason to believe that Chalabi would do substantially better than this feeble result?
--Josh Marshall
Every so often a reader writes in and asks this question. And it's a pretty good one. So here goes: When was the last time there was a major terror alert? They were something like a regular occurence for the eighteen months or so before the 2004 election. And through 2004 the administration pushed the line that al Qaida was aiming to disrupt the elections themselves. But as near I can tell there hasn't been a single one since election day.
Through 2004, of course, critics of the administration routinely questioned whether the frequency and timing of the various terror alerts were not all or in part for political effect.
How do we explain what appears to be a night and day difference between the year prior to November 2004 and the year since in terms of terror alerts and scares?
--Josh Marshall
Several readers have pointed my attention to the ruling that came down yesterday in the 4th Circuit barring the government from transferring Jose Padilla from military to civilian law enforcement custody. It's a harsh rebuke of the administration's legal tactics. And what caught my eye is that the author of the ruling is J. Michael Luttig, the darling of conservative jurisprudence and a top candidate for the Supreme Court.
As Jerry Markon puts it in the Washington Post, "In issuing its denial, the court cited the government's changing rationale for Padilla's detention, questioning why it used one set of arguments before federal judges deciding whether it was legal for the military to hold Padilla and another set before the Miami grand jury."
Reading over the reportage of what happened yesterday, it seems clear that Luttig and the other two members of the panel were less perturbed about civil liberties issues per se (Luttig wrote the decision that allowed the government to hold Padilla indefinitely as an 'enemy combatant') than the administration's cynical willingness to jump from legal argument to legal argument, from one set of facts to another, as the needs of the moment dictate.
--Josh Marshall
With Jack Abramoff apparently ready to deal and kick his eponymous probe into high gear, it's worth clarifying a key point about criminality and campaign contributions. As you can see with all the politicians unburdening themselves of Abramoff-related campaign contributions, Abramoff and his clients spread money around pretty widely. And this has led to some misunderstandings -- some intentional -- about what this case is about.
A comparison to the Duke Cunningham case is instructive.
At the beginning of the Duke scandal it was clear that he'd gotten a lot of campaign contributions from the likes of Brent Wilkes and Mitchell Wade. When all the facts came out, though, those contributions were revealed as little more than window dressing, an early ante up for the real bribery and pay-offs. (There's actually a surreal comedy in some of the details of the Duke case since he was making mind-numbingly precise disclosure filings about travel and knick-knacks while pocketing 5-figure bribes.)
In any case, I doubt we'll see quite the cartoonish level of bribery that we saw in Cunningham's case. But the underlying pattern will be the same. Abramoff and his clients gave contributions to a lot of people; a substantially smaller subset of those people were actively on the take. And it's from those quarters that you hear the sound -- metaphoric if not real -- of muscles constricting with the news of Abramoff's impending cooperation.
--Josh Marshall
The leaks to Anne Kornblut continue. Abramoff nears a deal to testify against "at least a dozen lawmakers and their former staff members."
--Josh Marshall
Is this SurveyUSA poll borne out by other public opinion data? It says that 52% of residents of the New York area support the striking union workers while 40% support the MTA. Link courtesy of MYDD.
Jo-Ann Mort has more on the unfolding strike.
--Josh Marshall
More policy cynicism and legislative authoritarianism from the Republican majority. Mark Schmitt has the details.
--Josh Marshall
If the number of articles getting punched up is any measure, the folks close to the Abramoff case are talking, and Jack himself is about to deal. The immediate trigger is the SunCruz case down in Florida, which is set to get started on January 9th. But that is only the first of a nest of overlapping criminal investigations in which Abramoff figures as a or the central player.
All of this raises the question of just what cards Abramoff has left to play.
From one perspective, he's handled this whole saga pretty poorly, in the sense of how long he's let this thing drag out. A number of the other key players have already pled out -- most notably, Scanlon and Kidan. And more than a year of news coverage has made Abramoff enough of a household name that it's not like a prosecutor would really cut him much of a break for giving up other bit players. It's hard to see how Abramoff avoids spending a lot of time in prison without giving up actual politicians, not staffers or other lobbyists, but people who run for office. That is, after all, what this is all about.
Any of our DA or US Atty readers care to chime in?
--Josh Marshall
People have been asking what it's like at the center of the 2005 New York City transit strike. But actually, for me, it's something like being in a bubble. With the new people we're hiring we're about to open our first TPM offices. But for the moment, I work mainly at home, which is downtown, actually in the teens.
When I was out in the neighborhood yesterday -- i.e., not during rush-hour -- there was nothing to see that would make you think things were anything but normal, other than the little 'closed' signs hanging from the subway entrances. If anything the streets seemed more empty than usual. As I said, though, in a bubble, or rather, in the center of the storm.
The craziness is getting in and out of the city or between the different boroughs or rather anywhere that's more than ten or twenty blocks and thus not an easy walk in sub-freezing temperatures (26 degrees right now). My wife, whose commute is only about thirty or forty blocks, asked me to wish her luck when she left this morning.
It was a surreal feeling since I knew I was in the center of a city whose civic metabolism had been turned upside down. Just not for me; I was lucky.
--Josh Marshall
U.S. District Judge James Robertson, one of 11 members of the FISA Court, resigns in protest.
--Josh Marshall
NYT: "Jack Abramoff, the Republican lobbyist under criminal investigation, has been discussing with prosecutors a deal that would grant him a reduced sentence in exchange for testimony against former political and business associates, people with detailed knowledge of the case say."
--Josh Marshall
Here's a really good post by Kevin Drum that I highly recommend. Kevin points to a key issue at the heart of the NSA debate that few are engaging. In genuine 'wartime' presidents have immense powers. But the president is operating on a theory of war that makes our 'wartime' status more or less permanent. Just how 'wartime' are we?
--Josh Marshall
I hear that Sens. Rockefeller and Roberts are now in an escalating press release over the NSA intercept story.
Roberts says that contrary to what Rockefeller says in his letter released yesterday, there were many things he could have done if he didn't think the NSA program was appropriate or legal. But he didn't do any of them. Roberts even says that Rockefeller expressed support for the program in subsequent classified briefings.
As readers of this site know, Roberts has a pretty good history of fibbing when the White House requires it. But we also have no brief for Sen. Rockefeller. For years he was far too passive on the Iraq WMD front, though he's been getting action of late on the Niger business -- about which we'll say more later.
So let me toss out of a few questions. Exactly who else got the briefing that Rockefeller did? I assume it was limited to the leaders of each body and the chair and ranking members of the intel committees. How much ability did Rockefeller have to get the rest of the senate intel committee to take the matter up? Who else was he legally permitted to communicate with about this?
Let's get the specifics on the table. Let the chips fall where they may. Whatever you think of this program, oversight is essential in such a case. Let's get the details.
--Josh Marshall
Defensetech.org has some reactions to the NSA story from sigint professionals.
--Josh Marshall
William Kristol and Gary Schmitt have a column in today's Washington Post that advances a simple premise: the president "uniquely swears an oath -- prescribed in the Constitution -- to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution." While Congress legislates for the 'in general', the president is the one who must face particular crises, ones whose dimensions, dangers and particularities legislators could not have foreseen. This mix of responsibility and authority gives the president the unique and awesome power to set aside Congress's laws in the over-riding interest of securing the nation.
This is a doctrine fraught with danger in a constitutional republic. But it is not a new theory and it is not without some merit.
A little more than a year ago, I discussed this in a post about an earlier Pentagon report which argued that the power to set aside laws is "inherent in the president." That principle is simply not reconcilable with the principles of our republic. But no less a man than Thomas Jefferson considered a possible exception ...
If memory serves, Thomas Jefferson -- when he was later thinking over the implications of his arguably unconstitutional Louisiana Purchase (and again this is from memory -- so perhaps someone can check for me) -- argued that the president might find himself in a position in which he might have the right or even the duty to disregard the law or some stricture of the constitution in the higher interests of the Republic.Jefferson's argument, however, wasn't that the president had the prerogative to set aside the law. It was that the president might find himself in a position of extremity in which there was simply no time to canvass the people or a situation in which there was no practicable way to bring the relevant information before them. In such a case the president might have an extra-constitutional right (if there can be such a thing) or even an obligation to act in what he understands to be the best interests of the Republic.
The clearest instance of this would be a case where the president faced a choice between letting the Republic be destroyed or violating one of its laws.
But that wasn't the end of his point. Having taken such a step, it would then be the obligation of the president to throw himself on the mercy of the public, letting them know the full scope of the facts and circumstances he had faced and leave it to them -- or rather their representatives or the courts -- to impeach him or indict those who had taken it upon themselves to act outside the law.
As I recall Jefferson's argument there was never any thought that the president had the power to prevent future prosecutions of himself or those acting at his behest. Indeed, such a follow-on claim would explode whatever sense there is in Jefferson's argument.
If you see the logic of Jefferson's argument it is not that the president is above the law or that he can set aside laws, it is that the president may have a moral authority or obligation to break the law in the interests of the Republic itself -- subject to submitting himself for punishment for breaking its laws, even in its own defense. Jefferson's argument was very much one of executive self-sacrifice rather than prerogative.
This is where Kristol and Schmitt's hypothesizing fails republican muster. The president may well find himself or herself in situations that the Congress could not have anticipated or ones where the well-being of the country requires the president to ignore the letter of the law. (Only in the most extreme cases is this even conceivable -- but at least for the sake of conversation let's posit the possibility.) But the factor here is not the president's unique ability to judge these matters; the issue is time and urgency. Certainly, at the first practicable moment the president has to take the matter before the appropriate members of Congress, explain himself, request that the relevant laws be revised and open himself up to the possibility of real accountability for his actions.
And yet it seems pretty clear that this is not what the president did. The White House gave briefings to four or six members of Congress and then prevented them from discussing the matter either with colleagues or with staff. That makes the consultation pretty close to meaningless.
Kristol and Schmitt conclude by writing ...
This is not an argument for an unfettered executive prerogative. Under our system of separated powers, Congress has the right and the ability to judge whether President Bush has in fact used his executive discretion soundly, and to hold him responsible if he hasn't. But to engage in demagogic rhetoric about "imperial" presidents and "monarchic" pretensions, with no evidence that the president has abused his discretion, is foolish and irresponsible.
But this makes no sense. The Congress can't hold the president accountable or legislate on these matters for the future if they're never informed of what the president is doing. That's obvious. There may be some situations Congress can't have foreseen in advance; but Kristol and Schmitt are talking about a situation the president has prevented the Congress from considering even after the fact.
That's the end of constitutional government. No individual is absolute in a democratic republic. But this principle allows the president to make himself just that.
--Josh Marshall
I've been suggesting that what's in play here in this NSA matter is a new technology of some sort -- one which conducts searches in ways that you just can't get warrants for. And here Kevin Drum pulls together several threads of information that point in what figure is likely the correct direction.
He concludes by writing: "It seems clear that there's something involved here that goes far beyond ordinary wiretaps, regardless of the technology used. Perhaps some kind of massive data mining, which makes it impossible to get individual warrants? Stay tuned."
Like I said, a bunch of information I've heard over the last 48 hours tells me he's on the mark here. Not precisely, perhaps. I'm not sure it's data-mining precisely. Perhaps they're doing searches for certain patterns of words or numbers, perhaps something as simple as a phone number. But unlike 'traditional' wiretapping, in which you're catching the conversations of a relatively small and defined group of people, this may involve listening in on a big slice of the email or phone communications in the country looking for a particular phone number or code or perhaps a reference to a particular name.
From a technological point of view there's not really much outlandish about this at all. This is just the sort of thing the NSA is in the business of doing overseas. But you can see how this would just be a non-starter for getting a warrant. It is the definition of a fishing expedition.
--Josh Marshall
Quite a spread. Polls of the president's approval rating over the last week are, in order from most recent, 41% (Gallup), 47% (ABC/Post), 42% (Fox), 50% (Hotline), 39% (NBC).
--Josh Marshall
Jon Alter: "I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting,
but one can only imagine the president’s desperation."
--Josh Marshall
Over the last couple days I've heard informed speculation from several knowledgeable sources that what is likely really at issue here is the nature of the technology being deployed -- both new technology and technology which in the nature of its method of collection turns upside down our normal ways of thinking about what constitutes a reasonable or permissible search.
Here's what one reader sent in this evening ...
I suspect that others have noticed an odd element in Sen. Rockefeller's letter. He takes pains to point out that he is neither a lawyer nor a technical specialist - presumably, the latter referring to the technology being proposed for the non-FISA wiretaps that the Administration has put into place. And, he complains that he needs the help of staff to make sense of what he was briefed on.It's an odd comment, if all that was sought by Cheney was the ability to look, prospectively, at telephone or computer communications. Where's the technical novelty? and for that matter, the law isn't that complex. You might expect Rockefeller to say, I disagree, but he wouldn't stress the need for staff help in order to review complex new issues of law and technology.
But it fits together if what was being proposed was to look, either prosepectively or retrospectively, at everyone's E-mail -- which the NSA is reportedly capable of -- and then filter it for certain key words. Presumably, those messages which meet certain search criteria would then be culled for further study, or longer-term monitoring might be done of both the sender and recipient.
That sort of dizzying effort would raise both technical and legal issues, such as: what technical capabilities and safeguards are possible to implement; what is the legality of read-and-discard searches, and so on. Indeed, since I believe that retrospective searches could be done, the Administration might be seeking to look at all prior communications as well, once a hit was found. No FISA authorization would be possible, since this sort of activity was not contemplated by that law.
This fits all too well with the TIA comment that Rockefeller makes in his note, and his ominous warning that he is keeping a record. And I fear that this is what has been underway for the past two years.
Another TPM Reader, AF, had this to say ...
I've enjoyed reading your blog, today I read the Rockefeller memo. I am sure you've read enough bureaucratic communications to know what this memo says: "When this hits the fan, I am keeping a copy of this so you can't take me down with you." I hope you explicitly bring this out in one of your postings. The consulted senators knew this was ultimately going to go nuclear.
Then finally there was this note from TPM Reader CM ...
To read Sen. Rockefeller's feeble handwritten letter is like reading a note sent from a jailed political prisoner, isn't it? This must be the "oversight" Bush was talking about this morning - giving a Senator an iota of information regarding extra-legal executive branch activities, prohibiting him to even tell his own staff, and then refusing to respond in any meaningful way when he writes a handwritten letter of concern to the VP ...
What do you think? Share your thoughts with fellow readers at this thread we just set up at TPMCafe.
--Josh Marshall
I was in meetings for most of the day today. And clearly a lot has transpired over the course of the afternoon. But I wanted to go back and clarify one point that I believe has become muddled a bit in the discussion of the White House's legal argument with these wiretaps.
As near as I can tell, they're actually not arguing that the Afghanistan War Resolution gave them the authority to override whatever laws or constitutional prohibitions exist against these warrantless searches/wiretaps. What they're arguing is that the Resolution affirmed the president's inherent power as commander-in-chief to do these things.
They really do seem to be arguing that the president's powers as a wartime commander-in-chief are essentially without limits. He's simply not bound by the laws the Congress makes.
For more on this, see this September 25th, 2001 memo by John Yoo, then Deputy Assistant Attorney General, and this Newsweek article from a year ago, which discusses it.
--Josh Marshall
Following up on the post below, we've just posted the newly-released letter Sen. Rockefeller wrote to Vice President Cheney back in July 2003 questioning the NSA domestic wiretapping.
--Josh Marshall
Sen. Rockefeller (D-WV) just released a letter he sent the vice president on July 17th, 2003 after he received his first briefing about the NSA intercepts program. We'll be posting the letter momentarily. The long and the short of it, though, is that Rockefeller, as Ranking Member of the senate intelligence committee, was given a brief descrption of what was happening, but wasn't allowed to discuss it either with his staff or with his colleagues, even other senators on the intel committee.
--Josh Marshall
From perusing a few headlines it seems the White House and some editors are taking to arguing that surveillance or domestic wiretapping is necessary for national security, that it saves lives.
Of course, it does. What a stupid thing to say, or for the White House, what a disingenuous thing to say.
Wiretaps are conducted around the country every day. The FISA Court alone approves something like a half a dozen a day in highly classified national security or espionage related cases.
The only issue here is why the president decided to go around the normal rules that govern such surveillance, why he chose to make himself above the law.
--Josh Marshall
Back in March I did a few posts trying to get some answer or even an argument to back up Joe Klein's claim that Social Security was a program suited to the industrial age but not to the information age.
At the time on Meet the Press he had told Paul Krugman that "I think private accounts a terrific policy and that in the information age, you're going to need different kinds of structures in the entitlement area than you had in the industrial age."
This argument was beyond my powers of reasoning. And if there's no good argument behind it such talk is pernicious since finding new policy solutions to meet the challenges of the global economy is only impeded by an addiction to buzzwords and sloppy thinking.
I never got a good explanation of what the argument was. So I was surprised and disappointed to see this passage in an article by Matt Bai in today's Times magazine ...
Just as G.M. has protected its outdated products at the expense of its larger mission, so, too, have Democrats become more attached to their programs than to the principles that made them vibrant in the first place. So what if Social Security and Medicaid functioned best in a world where most workers had company pensions and health insurance and spent their entire careers with one employer? The mere suggestion that these programs might be updated for a new, more consumer-driven economy sends Democratic leaders into fits of apoplexy.
Given what he says here, Bai must be talking, as Klein was, about privatization and private accounts when he talks about Social Security.
Please bring me more policy wonks who can think in new ways as befits new times because we are surely in new times. But let's not spin our wheels with the siren song of cool-sounding phrases and poorly thought out arguments.
Bai apparently agrees with Klein that Social Security made for good policy "in a world where most workers had company pensions and health insurance and spent their entire careers with one employer" but not in a world with heavier job turnover and fewer employer-based supports like pensions and health care.
Maybe Bai has a theory to back this up. But it really seems to make no sense to me.
Let's discuss specifics.
As Bai suggests, one of the key challenges we face today is much more rapid job turnover and the decline of employer-based pensions and healthcare. The changes are, of course, tied together and each comes in response to the same economic pressures. If you're going to have four or five jobs over the course of your working life then the traditional employer pension you get after putting into twenty or twenty-five years at a company just isn't going to work -- at least not without some policy tinkering that makes the old system more portable between jobs.
How this makes Social Security less workable or efficient is difficult for me to understand since Social Security is the ultimate in portability. You can change jobs every six months for life and it doesn't matter. And your pension isn't reliant on every company you ever worked for still being solvent when you retire.
Truly, you really don't have to reason through this one very far or very hard to see that if anything has changed over the last few decades it is that Social Security has become more important and more suited to the circumstances of the time rather than less.
There are ideological reasons for changing Social Security or phasing it out. But Bai is saying the structure of our economy today makes it less workable, less efficient. I don't see where that stands up to simple argument. If someone can explain how it does, send me a brief argument to that effect and I'll print it.
--Josh Marshall
