Just POlitics

Big money politics

The Washington Post reports on big Democrat money being raised to kill personal Social Security accounts:

At the urging of Democratic leaders in Congress, a few political campaign veterans have formed Americans United to Protect Social Security. The nonprofit organization with close ties to organized labor plans to raise $25 million to $50 million to pressure lawmakers to vote against Bush's proposal.

"At Americans United to Protect Social Security, we are going to run a national campaign to defeat the president's privatization plan," said Brad Woodhouse, the group's spokesman and the former communications director of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "The president and his supporters in Congress are messing with the third rail [of politics]; we're going to make sure they get zapped."

Goofy Nader

The political fringe has a fringe and its name is Ralph Nader. He is once again on the loose and he is trying to jump in front of the reactivating anti-war protest movement. And as usual, he’s criticizing everyone. After all, only Nader can ever be right. Here is the article from the Washington Post:

"The organized antiwar movement took the year off in 2004 out of deference to John Kerry. It didn't want to upset his freedom to mimic Bush, as he became more of a hawk on the Iraq war. We'd go around the country, hammering on the war, with a withdrawal strategy, and there was no resonance," he said. "The whole antiwar movement is [now] coming back into action."

Nader's attempt to jump-start a movement comes as lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have turned their attention to Bush's proposed Social Security revision. Nader mocked the president's plan, saying it stands little chance of becoming law and amounts to little more than a distraction from Iraq.

"This is part of Bush's tactics," Nader said. "If he can't shift attention from domestic issues by starting a war, another war, he does it by pushing for changes which will never see the light of day."

Nader also blasted newly elected Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean for not pressing the Iraq issue more forcefully. "The Democrats have not learned anything from the campaign," he said. "They have not learned to stand on their own feet and to speak their own mind. They have not learned to make public their private criticisms of the war, which pour out like Niagara Falls when you talk to them privately."