Déjà vu?

Nope, it’s just George – that old ventriloquist’s dummy selling that old idea of private Social Security accounts again, now that the Dow has recovered from its slump. Of course the Dow as a measure of economic recovery is not very meaningful and the NASDAQ, for instance, is still very much a shadow of its former self, but the trolls who control the President know you don’t know much and George is back to reading the script like some minimum wage telemarketer touting hot stocks from a boiler room in Ft. Lauderdale.

It will create an asset, says he. That’s possible if one is adept at playing the market, which few people are, but Joe the air conditioning repair man or Jose the roofer probably isn’t and may well see the sweat of his brow dry up long before he can hope to retire, or see the fruit of his labor turn rotten and disappear entirely if he followed George Bush’s advice of a few years back and put it all in something like Enron.

Social Security is about Security: insurance not investment. If the Republicans had any interest in creating assets for the working class, they wouldn’t have stifled any attempt at a minimum wage increase, but perhaps they’re just desperate to distract from their grotesque blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan and hope that as long as the puppet is reading from a script he won’t put his foot in his mouth until after the election.

Who knows, maybe they’re right. Maybe we are as stupid as they need us to be.