America Backs McColm Plan for Social Security

Yes, the numbers are in and it's overwhelming. Between 75-80% of Americans believe to solve any problems with Social Security we simply raise the FICA cap and few believe we should cut benefits. These numbers exist for every age group. Even 67% of teabaggers are for raising the FICA cap. It is rare for any polling on a policy matters to yield such an overwhelming consensus.

Last year I wrote about the mythical problems with Social Security. I suggested raising the cap and the result would be to ensure Social Security through the year 2175 and beyond. We could even give people a raise. Even if we do nothing , Social Security will pay out full benefits through 2037 and then the cut would be to 90% for a decade and then to 80%. It's not as if Social Security vanishes.

Cynically, I know why Americans support this. Only a few percent of Americans now earn more than the cap of $106,000. So the solution is painless for the nation.

That's why you are not going to hear a peep from President Obama on this issue. There really is not a problem and he can actually kick the can down the road until a second term. Progressives started to howl that President Obama was going to put Social Security on the table for negotiations with the Republicans. Yesterday, the White House denied that and denied President Obama would support raising the retirement age.

Meanwhile Paul Ryan will be answering the President's speech tonight. But Ryan can not speak openly about his plans to privatize Social Security and turn Medicare into a voucher system. Another thing Paul won't talk about is his plan to raise taxes for those earning $20,000 to $200,000 and severely cutting taxes for the rich. Coporate taxes also would be eliminated and instead Ryan wants to create a consumption tax, which will hurt the poor and the middle class. You will not hear any of that tonight.

President Obama takes the podium tonight with a 56% approval rating in the latest CNN/ Opinion Research poll and a 46% approval rating among independents, about a ten point leap since the election. He also has a 57% approval rating among investors for his economic policies.

Finally, the White House is beginning to wake up to their communications problem. They have been ushering in Democratic talking heads and political types to discuss the content of tonight's speech so that the media will not be dominated by Republican talking heads like the last two years. The flashy addition will be the Enhanced capability to the White House's live feed of the speech. We are promised all those nifty graphs and blackboard drawings about the stimulus and economic growth. Whether this can overcome the GOP noise machine is still problematic.

At tonight's State of the Union, we will be missing several Supreme Court Justices because they felt dissed last year when President Obama criticized their Citizens United decision that gave total power in the United States to corporations. Some say the three most likely AWOLs will be Chuckles Thomas, Fat Tony Scalia and Judge Alito. It would be seen as too tacky if the Chief Justice Roberts didn't show.

The question is whether we will see the "most dangerous person in America" or the person Glenn Beck believes is the "most powerful man in America"--Cass Sunstein,the University of Chicago professor who now is in charge of evaluating business regulations for President Obama. Actually I am comforted to think Cass really is the most powerful man in America.

Which brings me to Glenn Beck's jihad against elderly CUNY professor Frances Fox Piven, who is "sowing the seeds of revolt." Apparently, Glenn Beck believes that there are nine people, which he calls the "The Intelligent Minority" who control America. Now some of these people are dead but their influence lingers on. They are Edward Bernays, the father of modern advertising, Sigmund Freud, George Soros, Andy Stern, Walter Lippman, Frances Fox Piven, former Governor Rendell, and Richard Trumpka, the head of the AFL-CIO. I'm dsappointed he left out the boogey-man of the Right, Saul Alinsky. Of his list, only Richard Trumpka is not Jewish. I guess Dick is the red herring because Alinsky would have made it totally too obvious. Perhaps, this is being snarky but the only "Christian" group allowed to proselytize in Nazi German were the Mormons. Is Beck anti-semitic much?

It's better to keep your ethnic smears more oblique so you can plot a political comeback. In this state of the "Cooch", George Allen, "Mr. Macaca", is plotting his return to the Senate and has thrown his helmut into the ring in a race against Webb.

Rahm Emmanuel has been thrown off the ballot for mayor of Chicago. No one knows what this means and Rahm vows he will triumph. If he somehow becomes mayor, how will he deal with Abu Dubai, which owns all of Chicago's parking meters? This was another great move by Mayor Daley who sold them to the country's Sovereign Fund.

I want to know where Halliburton will move its headquarters once Dubai sinks, which it is doing. I like how the U.S. Chamber now refers to companies like Halliburton as "our American foreign companies".

The military still can not find any connection between Private Manning, who is being kept in solitary at Quantico, and Julien Assange and Wikileaks. Manning is being without any charge.

Later we will explore what the Jasmine revolution and the Wikileaks publishing of the cables on the Middle East Peace Talks means or does not.

One of the most interesting sidelights of tonight's speech will be the rebuttal by teabagger Michelle Bachmann. I think I've misunderstood the teabaggers. A Michelle Bachmann should be viewed as Cindy Sherman gone bad. This is performance art. Just like Sarah Palin is the reality television candidate. The teabaggers are avant-garde. Tacky, true. But the Koch Brothers are self-proclaimed anarchists and big bankrollers of the arts. They know the history of vanguard art movements. Here they got a chance to buy one for their own. And imagine the laughs at the Koch household having a political movement named after a gay sexual practice. It's so DADA.


And save the TA-TAs.