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politics State

Facts Aren’t Always Impartial

I was listening to Doug Wright this morning talking about the John Swallow situation and I found myself laughing at the linguistic gymnastics he was engaged in trying to discuss the situation without suggesting that impeachment might be the proper course of action to untangle the mess that Mr. Swallow has created.

I can’t decide whether the verbal somersaults were a result of Mr. Wright trying to appear unbiased while secretly agreeing with the Eagle Forum that impeachment should be reserved as a tool we use after we know an official is guilty of serious crimes such as the FBI might investigate or if it was simply a result of Mr. Wright not understanding that being personally impartial does not require the pretense that the facts of the situation be impartial – as if there are facts in favor of Mr. Swallow the way there are so many facts that clearly demonstrate that a legislative investigation is already warranted. Of course there are many unproven allegations out there but there are enough allegations backed up with enough evidence to clearly warrant an investigation by the House.

Here is my unbiased (and unvarnished) opinion. Unless the House is able to investigate and prove that the many emails, recordings, and receipts that we already have in relation to Mr. Swallow’s interactions with Mr. Jensen and Mr. Johnson were fabricated then Mr. Swallow has clearly violated the public trust and should not hold any position of public trust – even if everything he did was technically legal as Mr. Swallow obviously believes (which is why he insists on directing our focus to the existing investigations by the FBI – which necessarily cannot address the issue of public trust).

Categories
culture National politics

Saving Social Security

Photo by 401(K) 2013

A comment by Doug Wright on his show this morning got me thinking. Doug talked about how incensed he was by a comment made by someone running against Harry Reid that her father never cashed a social security check because he refused to take a handout. (I’m assuming he was referring to Sharron Angle but I’m too lazy to confirm that because the identity of the person he was quoting has no bearing on my subject.) Doug was incensed because of the characterization of Social Security as a handout considering that “we have all paid into it.”

The thought that struck me was that perhaps Social Security should be charity – as opposed to an expectation. The way the system is currently set up, everybody who pays into Social Security expects to receive checks from Social Security when they retire. That’s not entirely true of my generation, many of whom are highly skeptical that Social Security will still be around when we arrive at retirement age, but it is historically true. How much of our Social Security solvency problem would evaporate if we were to add means testing to the social security calculations such that those receiving payments would receive reduced payments or no payments depending on the amount of wealth they had available (regardless of whether they were tapping into that wealth).