The low-key “legislative exchange” group has been in the news a lot, promoting right-wing bills in state governments. But it seeks a role on the national level as well. One of its longtime targets is one of the biggest: Social Security. The American Legislative Exchange Council is taking some flack – and burnishing its conservative [...]
Archive for the ‘Social Security’ Category
ALEC’s Bigger Target: Social Security
Book Launch for ‘The People’s Pension’ in NYC
04 Apr 2012 at 16:13
Eric Laursen
AK Press, Bluestockings Bookstore, Retirement, Social insurance, Social Security, The People's Pension
What: Book launch event for The People’s Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security Since Reagan When: Fri., April 27, 7 p.m. Where: Bluestockings Bookstore, 172 Allen St., New York, NY 10002 (just south of East Houston St.) The People’s Pension is out after some years of my own struggle to research it, write it, [...]
First Review in on “The People’s Pension”
02 Mar 2012 at 17:54
Eric Laursen
Retirement, Social insurance, Social Security, The People's Pension
The first review of The People’s Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security Since Reagan, is out, and it’s good. Ken Buffin is one of our leading actuaries as well as an economist and statistician. He has been studying, consulting on, and writing about Social Security throughout the period I cover in my book. In [...]
“Rebuilding the Foundation” of Social Security, Chapter 1
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, “saving” Social Security doesn’t have to just be about making more fiscally “solvent.” It can also link up with efforts to raise wages, make the program more equitable, and even to start rebuilding the U.S.’s crumbling infrastructure – without privatizing it. In fact, there are a multitude of ways to [...]
What’s the Matter with Chisago County?
The solid middle class citizens of our economically beset nation are sorry that their growing dependence on government handouts is bankrupting the federal government. If they could possibly send the money back, they would. But they can’t, and so the poor get less. That seems to be the message of a major New York Times [...]
Demanding the Possible from Social Security
The dead-end debate over Social Security’s solvency has long stymied any discussion of how to improve the program for its participants. Now may be the time to break that logjam. Here’s a way that progressive lawmakers can help to do so. Hard as it is to conceive, the last time a significant improvement was [...]
Newt Gingrich Can’t Get With the Program
Why is the Republican Party leadership so scared of Newt Gingrich? Putting aside his generally abrasive personality, his loud streak of megalomania, and his tendency to self-destruct – OK, that’s a lot! – it’s hard to think of much in the way of substantive policy matters that sets the former House speaker apart from the [...]
People’s Pension – the Book – Available Soon
09 Jan 2012 at 08:32
Eric Laursen
AK Press, Medicare, Social insurance, Social Security, The People's Pension
It’s been a long time in the works, but The People’s Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security Since Reagan will be available from booksellers by approximately mid-March. The worthy folks at AK Press are bringing out my book, which traces the 30-year war against Social Security and the struggle to defend it. You can [...]
Who’s Going to Defend Social Security?
Strangely enough, it’ll probably be the Republican right. Once again. Congressional Republican and Democratic leaders have chosen the members of the “Super Congress” that will determine round two of the spending cuts – and, possibly, tax increases – under the Budget Control Act of 2011. As expected, the GOP members are all hardliners on taxes [...]
Times’s Leonhardt misrepresents Social Security, Medicare
David Leonhardt, along with Matt Bai, is part of the New York Times’ center-right Washington tag team. So it’s no surprise when he mourns Congress’s failure to “rein in” entitlements. But every so often he goes a bit too far. In today’s column, he makes the legitimate point that cutting discretionary spending as part of [...]
