Hustle, Desire, and Want-To

They've got a good ball club. Plenty of intestinal fortitude, speed AND quickness. But The Boy's front office may have forgotten a key element of any team's philosophy - "We're gonna take it one game at a time." From the look of things, the Drugstore Cowboyz might have decided to try that one gadget play a little too early in the second half of the Big Game - Social Security.

Paul Krugman lays out the potential for future Hall of Shame Games in his column today, "Spearing the Beast," and he does it in layman's terms:

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Here's how it would work. First, workers with private accounts would be subject to a "clawback": in effect, they would have to mortgage their future benefits in order to put money into their accounts.

Second, since private accounts would do nothing to improve Social Security's finances - something the administration has finally admitted - there would be large benefit cuts in addition to the clawback.

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He goes on to cite Jason Furman from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who game plans a not-so-rosy picture of retirement for Social Security's rookies, a picture not unlike the one that's all too familiar for retired Players who left the Game before free agency and a strong player's union came into being. Many ended up broke, with chronic pain from their playing days, and in some cases were simply left to fend for themselves on the streets, drinkin' and druggin' with the best of them.

Smirking Chimp pulls a lot of the Team's scouting reports together as well. Both Krugman and The Chimp listened in on a recent Team meeting when Stephen Moore from the BallClub For "Growth" stepped up to the chalkboard:

"Social Security is the soft underbelly of the welfare state. If you can jab your spear through that, you can undermine the whole welfare state."

I can just hear the QuarterBush as he breaks the huddle - "Far right, Far right, code Welfare State - Fuck 'em on two! Hup one (rule the world) Hup two (screw the Citizenry). Ready? (new budget proposal), Set (smear with fear). Hike!" (naked bootleg to the right of center).*

Yes, BoyGeorge & The Dicks have a great bawl club. But they may have forgotten the fact that The League now has free agency. And if some of the player's agents decide to put their Clients out on the free market rather than re-sign with the Home Team, we might just see a Coach's Challenge on this replay from Rethuglican Hell.

*(my apologies to real quarterbacks for calling the signals out of sequence)

Excerpt from Paul Krugman's column above is Copyright 2005, The New York Times Co. All rights reserved. Used here for contextual purposes only.