Alan Greenspan has stepped across the line. My litmus test for voting Demo from now on is going to be the candidates' stance on this man. In short, if you can live with him, then I can't live with you.
Today Alan Greenspan has finally crossed the line. Up to this point the only pundit with any gravitas to condemn the man for all loss of objectivity has been Paul Krugman. However, Greeny's testimony today before Congress demonstrates for all to see that he's as much a Right Wing Nut as all of the other Board of Directors of BushCo, Inc.
In the continuing campaign known as the "American Class War," which no one seems to want to talk about, Greenspan is now urging Congress to cut back Social Security benefits to the soon-to-be-retired Baby Boomers as a means of trimming the federal budget. He further argues that the recent Upper Class Tax Cuts be allowed to remain permanent, insisting that trimming the SS entitlement is far more helpful to America than rolling back tax cuts on people for whom Social Security makes little difference.
At age 30 I continually pay the Social Security "tax" with the full knowledge that even though I plan to retire at 53 the SS "windfall" I am supposed to receive will not appear in my mail box until I've already gotten long used to living without it. Now it appears that I may be well on my way to worm food before such funds even become available to us Gen-Xer's. In fact, I doubt at this point that such funds will even be available by the time I actually get round to needing them.
Greenspan has demonstrated in the past that he is perfectly willing to play Mad Monk Rasputin to GWB's Nicholas II, while we serfs continue to fall in a Class War not of our own making. What is most troubling of all is the supposedly objective position Greeny holds. What is also troubling is the fact that frontline Demos refuse to call the guy out. In fact Clinton, under whom much middle class wealth was redistributed up the food chain, kept the guy around. This kind of unabashed nonsense has no business coming out of the Fed Chief's unelected mouth.
Those of us who decry the lack of difference between the "two" parties need only point to this man as Plantiff's Exhibit A. Any Democrat, it now appears, who is serious about keeping Social Security intact and rolling back the Bush tax cuts AND who is willing to keep Greeny around once he's up for re-appointment is going to be faced with an openly hostile Fed. Greenspan, because of the color of objectivity with which his office is endowed, has a powerful Bully Pulpit, more powerful even than that of the Prez in the financial sector.
Thus emerges the first critical litmus test in the campaign for those like myself who believe that what this country is lacking is a real discussion of FUNDAMENTAL issues. Certainly any Democrat will represent a cosmetic change to the horror that is George Bush, but will the policies of the Chimp live on through Greenspan and his lessers? Will the undeclared Culture War continue to be fought and won by the powerful in both parties? Will wealth distrubution continue to move in the direction of the top one percent? So far, the ramblings of the Limo Liberals from either side of the Mason-Dixon Line convince me that it will.
Let's watch and see how the Democrats respond to the Mad Monk. In short, if they can continue to live with him, then I can't afford to live with them.
