John Busch also writes a letter to the editor of the Chico Enterprise Record about rudeness at Wally's Social Security Town Hall meetings. I've had my say on rudeness. Perhaps if President Bush wasn't carefully vetting his audience and his minions allowed people with different opinions in to his town hall meetings he would also be met with people who want to let him know that they don't agree with him.
But John was also bothered by how "private" and "privitization" were being cast as negatives in the debate by some people. Simply put the government is good at absorbing risk and Social Security is a big insurance program designed at absorbing the risk of retiring into poverty. In terms of this debate "privitization" means taking the risk on as your own. There is also the idea that Bush is intent on phasing out Social Security instead of fixing it. That could be where some of the rudeness is coming from.
I'll let Josh Marshall do the talking.
It's easy to get lost in verbiage about defined this and defined that and mazes of actuarial figures. The key, though, is the difference between an unsecured system and a secured one. That's why it's called Social Security and why phase-out is really the only candid way to describe what the president wants.
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