(Note: This is revised and updated from a column published four years ago. It is also available on my website.)

I figure Miami Beach. Sun, sand, services for the elderly. And I'll pay for it all with my very own private retirement account set up through the tireless efforts of my very own retirement guru, George W. Bush.

That is, I'll pay for it as long as the stock market does what it did in 1998 and not what it did in 2001 ... or 2002 ... or 2003 ... or 2008! I'll pay for it as long as we don't have another recession just before I retire. I'll pay for it as long as my investments aren't in the next version of WorldCom, Global Crossing, Enron, Bear Stearns or Lehman Brothers.

The real problem with private retirement accounts explains why this is a rich man's proposal. Put simply, people who know how to invest for the long term are more likely to do better, while people without investment experience are more likely to lose money. In other words, the rich get richer while the poor get shafted.

But private retirement accounts will pay more interest than the Social Security Trust Fund collects, won't they?  read more »

The Staten Island Advance published a letter to the editor I wrote last week today.

I normally would only post the link, but The Advance purges articles from its archives two weeks after they run, with no opportunity for even payed access.

YOUR OPINION
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Craig Donner, my counterpart as communications director in last year's congressional election, based on his Feb. 12 letter to the editor, thinks his boss Rep. Vito Fossella's constituents are amnesiacs.

First, he forgets to mention Fossella favored the deadlines and penalties imposed on seniors as an "incentive" to sign up for the Medicare prescription plan, written by the pharmaceutical industry, which was among his campaign's largest donors. Fossella favored punishing those not signing up by the May 15 deadline with a six month waiting period and increased costs. Why does the congressman wish to punish the elderly not meeting bureaucratic deadlines? Nobody benefits from delaying coverage and increasing costs for those not acting quickly enough. This is another example of Republican heartlessness.

A common Republican political strategy is to repeat a lie often enough until people believe it. Karl Rove has made a career out of it and Fossella continues to employ this strategy concerning Social Security. Donner states that Fossella is not in collusion with the American Enterprise Institute against Social Security and does not endorse privatization. The American Enterprise relationship may or may not exist. However, the right-wing Cato Institute is a different story. Their socialsecurity.org Web site continues to link to Fossella's 2002 appearance on CNN as a Bush administration privatization spokesperson (socialsecurity.org/sstw/sstw08-26-02.pdf). During that appearance, Fossella says Bush is on the right side of history on Social Security.  read more »