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January 6, 2005
Marriage Equality, Social Security “reform”, It’s Over and We Lost, Reunion, A Quick DC Trip
I had an interesting discussion on New Years with a friend of mine, who voted for Bush. While this wasn’t the reason he voted for Bush, he preferred Bush’s stance on Gay Marriage. This surprised me – this is someone who voted for Bush on security grounds, and he didn’t care for Kerry (though interestingly he said he’d have voted for Dean in a heartbeat…) Anyways, my friend is of the opinion that you can have Gay Marriage and call it whatever you want…except marriage. His argument on this not being a situation of “separate but equal” is that we opened up suffrage to women with the stroke of a pen, why couldn’t we extend full legal partnership rights the same way? Just call it something else?
I’d rather take it a step further – if the religious community has such a problem with letting gay people get married, then let’s simply remove marriage from the public domain completely. Everyone enters into domestic partnerships – be they straight or gay.
This way the religious communities can call it whatever they want, but all legal rights are the same. I think this is a solution that could please everyone. I didn’t get any legal rights when I became Bar Mitzvah, why should I get them for any other religious ceremony?
Why do I keep hearing that Social Security is broken? That it needs reform? The only thing it needs is for the Federal Government to pay back what it owes – then it will be fine. I understand that the CEO in Chief doesn’t like the idea of actually paying back what it owes, but it’s a simple solution that will make things work. There’s no need to go to Private Accounts. Furthermore – here’s the issue with private accounts…
The way Social Security works is the current workers pay for the current retirees. If the current workers start paying into personal private accounts, then the rug is obviously pulled out on the current retirees – or the government has to make up the money but running even more deficits. And what about when the current generation retires, or those who almost retired? If we switch to personal accounts then all the credits already built up will go away – unless the government intends to pay each worker all of their social security to invest – which is such a huge amount of money that I doubt even Bush would try that. This is a disaster waiting to happen that’s going to destroy the lives of a lot of people currently living on a fixed income.
To those Dems still crying foul – get over it. Now. We lost. We need to start the next fight, which will not happen if we’re still trying to fight the last one. There isn’t enough evidence to support a fraud theory – unlike 2000. They stole 2000. We lost 2004. End of story – let’s pick up the pieces and make damn sure we retake the House and Senate in ’06.
There’s talk of a JK Campaign reunion in NYC around inauguration day. That’d be a lovely diversion and a great reason to see Avenue Q. It’s amazing how many friends you make working on a Political Campaign…at least a Democratic one. I doubt I’d make that many friends working on a Republican campaign…then again, I doubt I’d ever work on a Republican campaign anyways.
As I write this, I’m in a plane heading up to DC (though I won’t be once I actually post it). Independence Air offers very inexpensive fares up and down the eastern seaboard – and thus far I’m quite happy with my experience on this flight. My only complaint is that once again I got tagged for extra screening for the flight. It usually happens when I’m on a One-Way Ticket or book less than 24 hours in advance. It just amuses me after working for the campaign, and being very close to some very powerful people. Oh well – not like TSA knows that. And if any of my readers are in the DC area, and I don’t already know you – feel free to drop me an e-mail.
I saw something on Headline News earlier about the American Heritage Dictionary announcing their word of the year at the end of the week. Last year it was “metrosexual.” I will bet anyone a Latte that this year it will be either “blog” or “blogger”.
Posted by MikeSager at January 6, 2005 11:40 AM
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