By Luke Warm
Professor of Mendacity
University of Munchausen
Students! Please be seated and listen up. According to the course catalog, this class in Public Relations is called Mendacity 101.
I had planned to lecture on “Deceit, Deception, Duplicity and Backstabbing as Public Policy Options.”
But I have been one-upped! With his usual genius for merging public policy with misdirection, the former Speaker of the House and wannabe President, Newt Gingrich, has done me one better. Newt has practiced what I preach: He has employed duplicity in a brave but stealthy attempt at dismantling that icon of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, Social Security. And at the same time, he pretends in his signature phony warmhearted manner that he hopes to preserve the institution of Social Security.
This is Mendacity on a Grand Scale!
In a “position paper,” Newt writes:
Growth and innovation means securing and strengthening Social Security by empowering Americans to invest in personal savings accounts. This gives Americans ownership over their retirement and the opportunity to unleash the power of the market to have prosperous retirements beyond their most optimistic expectations, while also wiping out all future liabilities in the system.
I am in total awe. Can anyone translate Newtspeak into plain English?
Has nobody cracked Newt’s code? Well, what Newt means is that if he’s President, Newt will do his darnedest to kill Social Security. Now, Newt knows that the rich conservatives he needs to vote for him are on the same page with him. Just as Social Security is an icon for liberal Democrats, so the fantasy of destroying Social Security is the bedrock goal of the true conservative. Newt does not need to deceive these people.
But Newt also wants votes of people who might want to keep Social Security because maybe their parents need Social Security payments, maybe they themselves receive Social Security checks, or maybe they see some utility in having a financial safety net for the elderly or disabled. In principle, they want to preserve Social Security, but they would allow for some tinkering.
In other words, they want to be duped. They need a helping hand from Newt in the gulling department.
Newt’s plain English goal, “Elect me and I’ll kill Social Security,” could turn off some voters with basic humanitarian instincts. So he disguises his intent: He will “secure” and “strengthen” Social Security by inventing a program that allows people to divert payments into Social Security to another program altogether. Newt knows that siphoning funds from Social Security would be the kiss of death for Social Security, but a foolhardy voter might think it is benign.
Newt Gingrich is a master of the ruse.
Can anyone tell me what this sentence means?
Growth and innovation means liberating the poor from the trap of the Welfare Empire through new programs that are tailored to local communities, that promote work and that incentivize lifelong study.
Can anyone tell me how “incentivizing lifelong study” is going to replace a monthly Social Security check that pays for food, rent and clothing?
The idea of “liberating the poor” through “lifelong study” is a stroke of genius. What an amazing natural talent the man has to distort, contort and utterly ravage the truth. The super-Nazi Goebbels and his ilk , inventors of the killing-camp entrance sign, “Arbeit Macht Frei” for “Work Makes Freedom” — would have to take their Nazi kepis off to Newt.
But I am worried for Newt. He lacks a sense of History. Has Newt Gingrich not heard of President George W. Bush? Class, only a fool and Mr. Gingrich would dare to broach the subject of Social Security reform after the last Republican President, Mr. George W. Bush, stumbled and failed to achieve a privately-funded rival to the retirement pension system.
Why did President Bush II lose his Social Security battle?
The truth came out.
Let us pause here for a moment and ruminate on that incredibly significant statement. If you are doing public policy, students, what is the very last thing you would want to have happen?
The truth!
The one thing you as a policy-maker want to accomplish above everything is to keep truth locked away in a hidey-hole where nobody can find it. That is why we have Professors of Mendacity like me to teach early the principles of obfuscation, diversion and prestigurgitation.
Republicans said retirees would get a better deal from a private retirement funding system. Stocks and bonds chosen by Joe or Josephine Blow with no training in finance would, so President Bush II argued, yield more money over time than retirees would get back from Social Security.
Well, students, there was a little problem: the dot-com bubble. People wondered if maybe some of those Wall Street billionaires who were shoveling truckloads of currency President Bush II’s way might have something to gain if they got control over a huge boondoggle such as privately-funded investments.
Now, Newt Gingrich has unveiled his own plan to subvert Social Security. His timing is a bit flawed. This time, we are struggling through the wreckage of the real estate bubble.
Remember what the American major said after we bombed a Vietnam village into oblivion? Newt is telling us we need to destroy Social Security to save it.
Does he really think people will believe that crock?
Is there anything different about the plan for “saving” Social Security rolled out by Newt Gingrich? No. It is the same tired old Republican effort to cheat the nation out of the only retirement income many people will have.
In my next lecture, I will sketch my plan for “saving” Social Security in such a way that Newt Gingrich can totally dupe presidential voters into electing a President dedicated to reducing all but a tiny elite to a poverty sufficient to guarantee a compliant work force flanked by a gigantic pool of jobless people who would be overjoyed to accept any crumbs that might fall from the Republican slop trough.
Loud applause. Cries of “Tell us your plan! Tell us now! We’ll take it to Newt! Tell us!”
Please, please, students. Yes, okay, here is my plan. It is very simple. Everyone in the United States will become a consultant and incorporate as a “think tank” and grab contracts with a quasi-governmental body such as Freddie Mac or health care companies, all of which have paid Mr. Newt Gingrich’s own “think tanks” more than $37 million.
Forget private investment accounts.
Forget Social Security.
Be a consultant.
Be Newt Gingrich.
You’ll reap a retirement beyond your most optimistic expectations!
Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com
