Local Control

One of the defining policies of conservatism is the principle of local control. At least until recently. The principle of local control is that whenever possible state, city and county governments, as well as school boards, should be making the decisions that effect them. States rights, a version of local control, was one of the arguments that southern states used to fight against the national push to eliminate slavery throughout the United States. Cities and states that object to civil rights legislation or voting rights laws cite the preference for local control. Local control has been one of those lines that differentiate American  conservatism from liberalism, with liberals generally supporting national solutions while conservatives favoring the rights of states and cities to set their own rules. 

This is not a black and white issue. There are some things that are best handled locally, while others need consistent treatment across state lines. There are a lot of grey areas and differences of opinion on where the line should be drawn. But the Republican Party has lost its interest in and support of, local control. Today's example is an executive order by the governor of Florida to prohibit school districts from imposing mask mandates. I don't believe that it's arguable that a school district is in the best position to make appropriate decisions for their students and teachers. Sure, there likely isn't unanimity on a school board's decisions, but they are elected by the people in their school district and are answerable to them, not to the governor. Districts in different regions would make decisions that might vary from each other - dictates from the central state government are simply inappropriate.

This latest example is part of a national trend for state governments that are dominated by Republicans to nullify actions taken by predominantly Democratic cities within those states. We see, especially in places like Texas and Florida, governor and legislatures preempting local decisions regarding homelessness, firearms regulation, sanctuary cities, rights of transsexual individuals, workplace unionization, menu labelling, removing Confederate statues, affordable housing, implementation of sales taxes, cutting police budgets, and voting accessibility. 

Like the interest in deficits, national debt and fiscal responsibility that Republicans only care about when the Democrats are in power, this about face on local control is just another example of hypocrisy in the modern Republican Party.

Social Security Misunderstanding

It's time for another lesson on Social Security, what it is and what it isn't. Periodically you'll see social media posts or memes claiming that your social security has somehow been stolen, or wondering "where all that money went", or complaining about all the money that "you paid in". 

The biggest misconception about social security is that it's some kind of savings account where you put money in and you get it back when you retire. It's not even much like a retirement account, an IRA or a 401(k), where you do exactly that. The money that is deducted from your paycheck isn't in a vault somewhere with your name on it, waiting patiently for you to retire. It is helpful to think of Social Security, not as a retirement account, but as an insurance policy, with your payroll contributions similar to an insurance premium. Furthermore, the insurance that it is similar to isn't life insurance, but more like auto or medical insurance. It's plausible that you may never make a claim on your auto insurance policy. You may go your whole life and never have an accident. Where does all that money go? You don't get it back at some point if you decide to sell your car. No, your premiums go toward paying out the claims of people who do have accidents. (And paying the salaries of insurance company employees of course) Social Security is very much like that. While you, as a non-retired worker, are paying payroll taxes with every paycheck, there are people who are collecting Social Security retirement benefits. Their benefits aren't being paid out from an account with their names on it, but from the money that you are contributing now. 

What about the people who die before they can start collecting benefits? Where does that money go? It doesn't go anywhere, because it wasn't there to begin with. All the payments that the unlucky person who died young made had already been paid out to retirees when he was alive and still working. He can't put all the payroll taxes he paid over his lifetime into his will for his family to inherit. (Spouses and sometimes children of deceased persons who would have been eligible for benefits can claim benefits based on the deceased's earnings record, this is different than treating the payroll contributions themselves as an asset which can be passed on in a will or otherwise transferred)

Another popular misconception is that the looming insolvency of the Social Security Trust Fund is due to the fund being "stolen from" by Congress, presidents, or both. The Social Security Trust Fund is not a bank account, or a Scrooge McDuck-like vault full of cash. What it is is a way of accounting for the annual surpluses. The Trust Fund is not the money that you and every other wage earner contributes. What it is, is the difference between what is collected by way of payroll taxes and what is paid out as benefits. Until very recently there was always more collected than what was paid out. So, what do you do with that money? You could put it in a savings account. But when money goes into a bank account it isn't physically in the bank, the bank uses that cash to loan money to businesses and individuals. The money that an individual or business has in the bank is only there on paper, you can get it out when you need it, but it's actually being used by the bank and they're profiting off its use. What the US government does, rather than putting the Social Security Trust Fund in a bank, or investing it, is lend the money to itself. By law, the annual surplus is invested in US Treasury bills that earn interest. This way, rather than leaving the collected cash in the hands of a third party, who can profit off that cash, the Social Security Administration holds Treasury bills, while the government can utilize the cash it receives from the purchase of the Treasury bills. Neither Congress nor any president has "stolen" from the Social Security Trust Fund. The money is there in the same way that your money in a bank is there, even though it may have been loaned out to a local business or homeowner. So, why do we hear about the Trust Fund becoming insolvent?

Very recently (in may have been this very year) the payouts for benefits exceeded the funds collected by way of payroll taxes. Therefore the surplus will not increase as it did in the past. The Trust Fund balance still is not decreasing (yet) because of interest payments on the Treasury bills from the general fund to the Trust Fund. Going forward, the difference between collections and benefits will need to be paid for by cashing in the Treasury bills that the Trust Fund holds. Eventually, possibly as soon as 2034, the balance in the Trust Fund will be depleted to the extent that there will only be enough income from payroll taxes to fund around 75% of benefit payouts. What will happen? No one really knows. Possible solutions include increasing the retirement age, or raising the payroll tax percentage; possibly taxing a greater proportion of benefits. 

Yes, there are problems on the horizon for Social Security, but the reasons are somewhat more complex than Facebook memes suggest.

Voter Supression

Aside from the way the Electoral College skews the "will of the people", most of us, until recently, had a reasonable expectation that our votes would be counted. This reasonable expectation fed the assumption that the way to get things done the way you wanted them done was to elect people who held the same views as you did. 

Ha! How naïve.  

Unless you've been living under the metaphorical rock you know that there has been an upsurge in efforts to ensure that your vote doesn't count, or to ensure that you just don't get to vote at all. One of the more insidious, yet perfectly legal, vote rigging strategies is gerrymandering. This is a method of drawing Congressional and other political boundaries so that one party remains in power, even when they receive a minority of votes. There are many examples of this, one local example is how the County Board district lines were redrawn after the 2010 census. At one time the districts resembled jagged pie slices. Each district included a portion of Lincoln, which is in the center of Lancaster County, as well as a slice of small town and farming parts of the county. When the district boundaries were changed, most of Lincoln, which voted primarily for Democrats, was contained within one district while the other six were made up of primarily small town and rural areas, where the people tended to vote for Republicans. The result was a 6-1 Republican-Democrat split, where previously it might be 4-3 or 5-2. You can see the results of this most clearly in Midwest states with populous urban areas. The majority vote in Democrats to statewide offices while the gerrymandered legislature remains majority Republican. 

In several of these states the Republican legislature, immediately after a Democrat was elected as Governor or other statewide office voted to restrict or limit the Democrat's powers. In one state, the limitation in the Secretary of State's authority would  expire at the end of her term, presumably so that a Republican successor would have all of the former power. 

Republican-dominated states, in the wake of the Big Lie of a stolen election, have, in the dubious name of election integrity, imposed restrictions, roadblocks and hurdles to make it more difficult to register to vote, or even to get to the polls. They have set up a multitude of new rules expanding the ways that ballots can be thrown out, with most of the restrictions unsurprisingly affecting areas that historically vote for Democrats. Non-partisan local election officials in some states can be overruled by the legislature, which in some cases has the authority to declare an election invalid. And to rub salt in the wound, the Supreme Court just ruled that there is nothing unconstitutional about these laws. Of course it was a 6-3 decision - along ideological lines. Surprise! (It didn't have to be that way, but no, we couldn't bring ourselves to elect the email lady). And the Voting Rights Act 2.0 has been smothered in its crib by the Republicans and the moderate Democrats in the Senate. Surprise! 

Our Democracy is in jeopardy (you reply that "we're a republic, not a democracy and I will slap you through the screen!) - and it's getting more and more difficult to overcome this undemocratic takeover by the minority. You may not like the Democratic Party platform - you may think it's socialistic, or any other Fox News generated bogeyman, but they at least are trying to implement their programs by getting the most votes! They are trying to enact change by the will of the majority, not in spite of it.