With whooping cough now at epidemic levels, it’s becoming clear that one of the primary culprits is the idiotic trend over the last 10 years of parents, mostly affluent whites, opting out of vaccination out of a baseless fear that the vaccines are unsafe.

At least, that’s one of the possible conclusions a California Watch study reached:

Seven of the 12 California counties with the highest whooping cough rates also have above average rates of kindergarten students showing up to school with “personal-belief” vaccine waivers, a California Watch review of state data shows.

The state’s emerging whooping cough epidemic took center stage yesterday when a state public health official called on those caring for infants to get vaccines and to immunize children….

Last month, I reported on the high rate of cases in Marin County, where the county’s health officer pointed to personal-belief vaccine exemptions as a possible culprit….

The picture is less clear, though, in Fresno and Madera counties. They take fourth and fifth places in terms of whooping cough-infection rates. Yet both have a low rate of personal-belief exempted kids, at about 1 percent.

I think the answer here is actually pretty obvious. The stats from Marin and Fresno/Madera aren’t contradictory at all. They’re just telling us different things.

The evidence does clearly seem to indicate that parental refusal to protect their children and the community as a whole by stupidly not vaccinating their kids is fueling the epidemic. But what the California Watch article doesn’t mention is that this is compounded by another problem: the lack of access to affordable health care services in the Central Valley, especially among poorer residents.

While this hypothesis would need to be tested, one could pretty easily conclude that affluent parents on the coasts created an epidemic that has spread to hit hard those families who can’t afford to give their kids the kind of medical treatment they need.

This epidemic is already leading to another round of bashing these privileged parents who have followed junk science in refusing to vaccinate their children, weakening social immunity to whooping cough and other diseases. And such bashing is most definitely warranted.

But neither is it enough. The underlying problem here is that decades of right-wing attacks on government – especially on regulatory bodies and on public health services – has created conditions where this epidemic can grow and spread.

Here’s what I mean. One reason why the junk science about vaccinations spread is that Republican attacks on government regulatory bodies, from underfunding them to staffing them with industry-friendly hacks who look the other way when problems arise, made it possible for affluent parents to believe there could be a problem with vaccines. If you don’t trust government to keep food and drugs safe because you think government has been captured by industry (which it certainly has been), then it becomes possible to believe that vaccines cause autism.

That problem is bad enough. It is compounded by the consistent underfunding, including cuts, made to public health services that less prosperous Californians need for themselves and for their children.

A stronger, more robust government that provides better regulatory oversight and better public health services is necessary for vaccinations to work. Otherwise you’ll see these kinds of epidemics continue to spread, even though they are preventable.

The latest meme spreading among the punditocracy on the governor’s race is that Meg Whitman has ideas, but Jerry Brown doesn’t – so therefore Whitman has the advantage. There’s just one little problem with this view: Whitman’s ideas are extremely bad for California and our future.

Here’s Steve Lopez writing in the LA Times this weekend:

Unfortunately, I said – and Sloman agreed – Brown hasn’t applied that experience to any coherent or practical plan. And that would turn out to be the theme of the day, even when I later walked across the street to the Armory Center for the Arts to see what younger voters had to say about the Field Poll. (Janine Christiano, 29, and Robbin Owens, 41, who run the front office at the arts center, told me they care about ideas and capacity for growth, not age).

Sure, some of the senior center’s regulars said, age can be a factor if you begin to lose your edge. But it’s not nearly as big a deal as a candidate’s record and game plan.

Some of this is premature speculation. Jerry Brown has made it pretty clear he’s going to run an August-to-November campaign, in contrast to Meg Whitman who has dominated the TV with ads since the Winter Olympics.

At some point Brown will indeed have to offer his clear, coherent vision for California’s future, as I have been arguing since at least last fall. But that’s necessary for Brown to bring out his voters to the polls. If Brown doesn’t do it, it doesn’t mean that the mere fact Whitman has a game plan means it’s any good.

In fact, if you look at Meg Whitman’s platform, it’s comprised of the same failed ideas that George W. Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger used during the last decade, producing the current economic crisis.

One of Whitman’s core proposals is a call to increase the unemployment rate and drive the state into a double-dip recession by mass layoffs of public employees and further massive cuts to public services. Sure, it’s a clear idea, but it’s an extremely bad one, as almost any sensible economic observer would tell you.

Yes, Jerry Brown needs to offer his vision. But until he does, California’s media needs to do a better job of exposing the flaws of Whitman’s own plans. They would also do well to heed Calbuzz and stop letting Whitman off the hook when she lies:

A candidate couldn’t say one thing one day – like, for example, that they were opposed to a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants – and another thing another day – like they basically agree with an opponent who favors a path to citizenship. They’d be afraid of being called a liar in the papers, and that would actually matter.

But in the California governor’s race it now appears that we are witnessing the Death of Truth. From a cosmic perspective, this has come about because…

– The lugubrious mainstream media is often strangled by self-imposed, on-the-one-hand-on-the-the-hand, false-equivalency “balance,” in part intimidated by loud, if unfounded accusations of “bias” most frequently lobbed  by the right-wing. Thus the MSM at times seems unable and/or unwilling to cut through the miasma and call a lie a lie or a liar a liar.

Whitman’s campaign consists either of lies or of bad ideas. Jerry Brown’s going to need to contrast that with his own vision rooted in the truth. But until he does, Whitman shouldn’t get a pass.

Yesterday the California Democratic Party Resolutions Committee took up the question of November ballot initiative endorsements. After some debate, the committee narrowly rejected Tom Ammiano’s proposal to endorse Prop 19, and then unanimously approved the original plan to remain neutral on that initiative.

The speakers in support of Prop 19 – Ammiano and Alice Huffman of the California NAACP – made powerful arguments in support of the measure. Ammiano cited the more than 20,000 signatures we at the Courage Campaign (where I work as Public Policy Director) gathered in support of the initiative, the stack of which you can see at right, alongside the strong case for Prop 19 on the merits – to provide prison reform, help fix the budget, and to admit that our policy of prohibition has failed.

Huffman’s case was even more powerful. Rejecting claims that Democrats should be skittish of Prop 19 out of concern for their candidates on the November ballot, she called on delegates to “show courage” and endorse Prop 19 for the sake of ending the devastating war on drugs that has hit young African Americans and Latinos so hard, and seek a more sensible and rational regulatory policy of cannabis.

However, the more skittish view prevailed on the committee. In spite of the evidence showing that California Democratic voters support Prop 19 and their own party chair’s view that Prop 19 will boost turnout for Democrats, these folks worried that Democrats running in purplish or red areas would be hurt if the party endorsed Prop 19, even though some candidates in those kinds of districts already have gone on record in support of Prop 19.

I’m sympathetic to that view, but I think it also misreads the 2010 election. This is a turnout election, not a persuasion election. Democrats win by driving our people to the polls, plain and simple. Prop 19 will bring Democratic-friendly voters to the polls. If the CDP were to be on record in support of Prop 19, those voters might also be willing to cast their vote for Democratic candidates. If the party is neutral, then that might not occur at the levels we’d like.

Today the entire E-Board will take up the endorsement. It will require 60% to endorse. My feeling is the vote will be close. There’s no chance the CDP will oppose Prop 19, so the question is whether the party will endorse it or remain neutral. We’ll know by noon.

Prop 19 wasn’t the only ballot initiative endorsement that generated strong debate. Surprisingly (to me, at least) Prop 22, which would put a permanent end to state raids on local government funding, was very hotly contested. The Resolutions Committee ultimately voted to oppose Prop 22.

Prop 22 supporters argue that it’s unfair to make local governments suffer because of the state’s budget woes, hurting police, fire, and other vital services provided by local government. Many unions that represent workers in local government strongly support Prop 22. Others argue that the raids on local government funding play a major role in the public’s negative views of the legislature, fuels anti-union sentiment (including attacks on pensions) and undermines the progressive case for government instead of making it clear the problem lies with the 2/3rds rule in Sacramento.

On the other hand, Prop 22 opponents, led by the CTA, CNA, and the California Professional Firefighters, argue that this would tie the hands of the legislature and lead to deeper cuts to public schools and other state-funded priorities. They expressed sympathy for the woes of local governments, but did not want to conduct further ballot-box budgeting. This view won out at the Resolutions Committee, despite an effort by some to have the party be neutral on what could be a very divisive proposition.

I’ve not seen any polling on Prop 22 yet, but it would seem likely to pass by a healthy margin this November. In 2004, Prop 1A passed with 83% voting yes, a proposition that strictly limited raids on local government funding, requiring 2/3 of the legislature to support it and requiring funds to be repaid to localities within 3 years.

CTA and others are likely to spend some money against Prop 22, so that will create a different dynamic around this proposition than Prop 1A. Still, it will be interesting to see which argument sways voters.

The rest of the debate was fairly straightforward. The party voted to oppose Prop 20 (extend Prop 11 redistricting commission mandate to include Congressional districts) and support Prop 27, which would abolish the commission and return all redistricting power to the legislature. Fred Keeley, who was screwed by the 2002 redistricting, spoke for Prop 20 and against 27, but his arguments were rejected in favor of Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren’s call to oppose Prop 20 and support Prop 27, pointing out that the Prop 11 commission is totally unrepresentative of California (it’s mostly affluent white men).

Other endorsements taken up by the Resolutions Committee and likely to stand at today’s floor session: Yes on 21, No on 23, Yes on 24, Yes on 25, No on 26.

UPDATE by Robert: I moved to endorse Prop 19 and spoke in support of it. It needed 60% to pass, but it failed with 85 in support and 101 opposed. The E-Board then approved the party being neutral on a voice vote. This means that local county committees can go ahead and make their own decisions.

Earlier this week we at the Courage Campaign (where I work as Public Policy Director) organized a petition to the California Democratic Party Executive Board meeting this weekend, calling on the party to endorse Prop 19.

The response has been very strong. As of 6PM on Friday, just over 20,000 people have signed their name to the petition, which reads as follows:

We, the undersigned, urge the California Democratic Party Executive Board to reform our prisons, help fix the budget mess, and make our communities safer by endorsing Proposition 19.

We reject the arguments of Senator Dianne Feinstein and others who oppose Prop 19. Prop 19 will provide for more effective regulation of cannabis, including prohibitions on its sale to people under age 21. It will help reduce drug crime by legalizing the growth, sale, and possession of small, reasonable amounts of cannabis. And it allows local governments to generate badly needed revenue by taxing cannabis.

We urge the Executive Board to follow the lead of the majority of California Democrats who support Prop 19 by endorsing it at this weekend’s meeting in San Jose. It is time to bring sensible, rational reform of cannabis laws to California.

I’m here at the E-Board meeting (I’m a member) to support Prop 19. There’s a lot of support here for Prop 19, as well as some people who are more skittish about the proposition. Over at FDL Michael Whitney did a good job debunking this, and several E-Board members I’ve talked to agree that Prop 19 is likely to help Democrats, not hurt them.

After all, rank and file California Democrats support Prop 19 – clear majorities of Dems back it, according to recent polling such as the Field Poll. With 20,000 signatures on the Courage Campaign petition, which I’ll be bringing to the Resolutions Committee tomorrow afternoon and the floor session on Sunday, we should be able to win this fight.

California’s unemployment rate fell slightly in June, from 12.4% to 12.3%. The EDD estimates that about 8,000 more Californians had a job in June than in May, but that’s still 100,000 below the level of June 2009.

Obviously a 0.1% drop in a sky-high unemployment rate isn’t much to cheer about. California’s economic recovery remains anemic. We’d obviously be in much worse straits if we’d listened to Carly Fiorina and not passed a stimulus – job losses would have been far greater and our unemployment crisis would be even worse than it is now.

Unfortunately, Sacramento did listen to Arnold Schwarzenegger. For three years now the state legislature has been cutting spending, pursuing austerity before it was in vogue. In 2009, the budget was cut by over $10 billion, including the mass layoff of at least 16,000 teachers. (Over 30,000 got pink slips, but federal stimulus funds helped almost half get hired back, usually on temporary one-year contracts. And Fiorina still says the stimulus was a bad idea!)

The impact of this state austerity is now clear. Instead of adding more jobs, California is mired in deep unemployment. Our government should be playing the role of stimulator, job creator, and wealth generator. Instead, under the guidance of a right-wing governor and a state legislature dominated by the right-wing minority party thanks to the 2/3rds rule, California’s government is being held back from playing this role.

If Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman get their way this November and are sent to the US Senate and the governor’s office, the situation will only grow much worse. Both have pledged to produce higher unemployment as a core plank of their plans for California.

There’s no doubt that the economic picture isn’t great, and the Obama Administration’s unwillingness to fight hard for a second stimulus is going to prolong the recession. But the first rule of economic recovery is “do no further harm.” Both Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman pledge to do a lot more harm, and we should keep that in mind as voters evaluate them both between now and November 2.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is leaving California in ruins, about to end possibly the worst governorship in California history (although some of the Mexican-era governors had it pretty bad, when Northern and Southern California sent armies to fight each other at Cahuenga Pass). But there are some things we can be thankful for about Arnold’s misrule, including the fact that his popularity, when it existed, did not help other Republicans.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was something of a one-off. He wasn’t trusted by the California Republican base, who didn’t see him as the conservative ideologue they desired, even though Arnold was plenty right-wing. Arnold might not have survived a typical GOP primary, and after Democrats and progressives beat him in the 2005 special election, Arnold began to forsake the GOP for a more centrist approach to governance. By 2007 Arnold and his party were barely on speaking terms.

Meg Whitman’s overall politics are very much like Arnold’s. But we’re starting to see a very big difference in how they treat the rest of the Republican Party. Whereas Arnold didn’t have coattails, Whitman is doing her best to buy them. According to an article in today’s Chronicle by Carla Marinucci and Joe Garofoli, Whitman plans to spend $30 million to help build the Republican Paty ahead of the November 2010 election:

The Chronicle has obtained a draft of a detailed 44-page state GOP “2010 Victory Plan” that outlines the party’s $85.5 million financial blueprint for a campaign effort that includes $30 million directed to the gubernatorial race.

The former eBay CEO is “putting a significant amount of money in … it could be $30 to $40 million,” said a GOP insider familiar with the plan. The source said Whitman is also expected to tap her fundraising sources and contacts for the party’s benefit.

The intent for Whitman is twofold: to not only give the party the tools to register as many as 500,000 new GOP voters to help her own race, but to build a stronger Republican Party that can elect more Republicans down the ticket.

Already Whitman has helped raise money for Sam Blakeslee, the Republican running against John Laird in the SD-15 race on August 17 that can help decide control of the State Senate. In fact, most of the votes that were cast in the first round in the SD-15 special election on June 22 actually came in on or before June 8, indicating that Republicans specifically linked the gubernatorial and SD-15 races.

I’ve also been hearing persistent reports that Whitman has taken a strong interest in some of the downticket statewide races as well, although I’m not yet sure if she’s directed any money to those races.

In any case, this is something Democrats will have to pay very close attention to this year. Whitman is like Arnold in many ways, but there’s a key difference: she is interested in and willing to build up the Republican Party, using her money and her connections. For 14 years Republicans have been consistent losers in California elections. Whitman appears determined to change that, not just by buying the governor’s office, but by reversing the slide in Republican fortunes.

I should be pleased with Joe Mathews’ latest column, attacking Carly Fiorina’s “voodoo economics” claim that tax cuts pay for themselves. But in making a good point against Fiorina’s ridiculous claims, Mathews himself makes an error in assessing the true impact of deficit spending:

For Republicans, deficits matter unless they hurt the ability to cut taxes. For Democrats, deficits matter unless they require spending cuts. Boxer and Fiorina appear to agree that it’s fine to steal from future generations to fund their priorities today.

They only disagree on the method of theft.

It’s just not the case that deficit spending involves “stealing from the future.” It is spending cuts that do that. This argument needs a strong pushback.

Spending cuts today, especially to education, health care, and transportation services, have nasty long-term effects on working people. With less education, earning power is reduced. With less health care services today, health costs rise tomorrow. With less transportation spending, people have to spend more money today to get to and from work, money they can’t save for tomorrow. And the lost jobs that result from spending cuts produce long-term unemployment that hurts individual careers as well as hurting the macroeconomic picture.

In short, spending cuts mean many people’s futures are less bright and less prosperous. Whereas deficit spending doesn’t necessarily mean that at all. Deficit spending, when it’s used to create jobs and sustain services, helps improve people’s long-term prosperity and brightens their futures. And that in turn makes it easier to pay back the debt.

It’s somewhat similar to the concept of a student loan. Many observers consider student loan debt to be “good” debt because, ideally, the borrower makes more money with the degree they borrowed to earn than they would have without the degree, even when the cost of repaying the loan is factored into the difference. Sure, you’re “stealing” from your own future earnings to put yourself through school, but in concept it works out.

(In practice it doesn’t always work out, since college costs are rising faster than wages can keep up. But then again, wages and employment rates are higher for college grads than for any other sector of the workforce.)

Younger folks like myself have instead seen our future stolen from us through tax and spending cuts made in the last 30 years. Just over the last 10 years, a lot of ground has been lost. I graduated UC Berkeley in 2000, and paid a tiny fraction of the costs a 2010 UCB graduate will have paid in fees, all to make up for state budget cuts to higher education.

Those students who can’t afford the high cost of college have had their futures stolen from them. But using deficit spending to subsidize their college education gives them a future. The same principle applies to most other forms of government spending.

The only issue with deficit spending right now is we’ve not done enough of it. Raising taxes on the wealthy, starting with letting the Bush tax cuts expire, would provide an added boost, and help stabilize the incomes and financial situation of everyone else in America, instead of giving more money to people who already have plenty of it.

(If you are at Netroots Nation, this is the place to be at 3 pm. – promoted by Brian Leubitz)

Once again, Calitics is convening a panel on California politics at Netroots Nation. Those of you who attended last year’s panel saw an excellent discussion, led by David Dayen, about our state’s crisis.

This year, I’m organizing and moderating a California panel titled California’s Challenge: From “Failifornia” to Progressive Laboratory, on Thursday July 22 at 3PM at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas, in room Brasilia 4. The panelists include, in addition to myself and Brian Leubitz, Rebecca Saltzman of The Next Generation consulting and the excellent Oakland blog Living in the O, Tom Saenz, President of MALDEF, and Lindsey Horvath, member of the West Hollywood City Council. Former Speaker Fabian Núñez was to be a participant on the panel as well, but recently informed us he couldn’t make it, and we’re currently in discussions with a possible replacement.

The purpose of the panel is to acknowledge our state’s crisis, but also to start figuring out how we can not only get out of it, but how we can start advancing progressive solutions. California ought to be a progressive laboratory, a place where we craft good policies that can be replicated around the country, like we used to, before California’s political exports became more right-wing in nature.

Already the panel has started to get some attention. Right-wing commenter JP Freire wrote about the panel today:

Producing change? I hope they’re referring to the “clink clink” change and not Obama’s “Lobbyist Appreciation Day” variety of change, because Californians need more of the former and less of the latter. We’ve already seen what happens when the state becomes a progressive laboratory: It becomes a piggy bank for special interests.

Of course, the last time California was anything close to a progressive laboratory was in the 1970s, in Jerry Brown’s first term of office. Since 1978 we’ve been a right-wing laboratory, and the results are clear: public services that are underfunded or being slashed entirely, mass unemployment, a serious environmental crisis, and a declining quality of life. I’ll stack the 1960s and 1970s of the Governors Brown up against the right-wing experimentation any day.

But then he goes on to slam two of the panelists, starting with yours truly:

Robert Cruickshank, the public policy director at the “Courage Campaign” which bills itself as “empowering more than 700,000 grassroots and netroots activists to push for progress change and full equality in California across the country.” Buyer beware: When the numbers for netroots and grassroots are combined, they’re usually just adding up the email distribution list. Cruickshank is also the chairman of the Democratic Party in Monterrey County and started an interest group campaigning for high-speed rail. So he’s basically responsible for empowering people to elect candidates to his party to filter more dollars into his pet transit projects.

Oh, where to start? The Courage Campaign does have over 700,000 members, which is likely far higher than Freire’s readership. As the Netroots Nation panel description makes clear, I am the vice chair of the Monterey County Democrats, not the chair (just so we’re clear, Vinz, I’m not after your gig).

I didn’t start Californians For High Speed Rail, though I am now its chairman. And yes, I do want to filter more dollars into transit projects. Specifically, I need about another $30 billion for the high speed rail project, and about another $100 million for light rail to Monterey. LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s 30/10 plan is actually fully funded, they just need a federal loan to get it done in 10 years instead of 30. I’ll have to let JP know where to send the checks.

Seriously, does he have any better idea for creating jobs, reducing dependence on oil and generating economic growth by liberating Californians from the crippling costs of oil and traffic-jammed commutes? I’m sure his answer will be some sort of unfunded tax cuts that have been proven to fail every other time they’ve been tried – hence the “Failifornia” subtitle on the panel.

Even though Speaker Núñez cannot attend, I’ll stick up for him anyway:

Even better: Hon. Fabian Núñez, another panelist, who is former political director for the Los Angeles Federation of Labor and former California Assembly Speaker (he left in 2008). His current bio for Mercury Consulting lists him as a lobbyist and boasts of his experience as “the Assembly’s lead negotiator on the California state budget, responsible for producing four state budgets, which ranged as high as $103 billion.” As high as? In California’s fiscal climate, you’d think negotiating a smaller budget would be the “change.” Unions such as his previous employer are the exact reason the state is in such dire straits.

Actually, Speaker Núñez deserves kudos for his role in pushing back against Arnold Schwarzenegger’s destructive policies, helping write and get AB 32 through the legislature (a perfect example of using CA as a progressive laboratory), and in fully funding our state’s public services and other key priorities. Our economy during Speaker Núñez’s tenure was built on a house of sand, given its dependence on the housing bubble, but that wasn’t his doing, and he did a good job in ensuring that the benefits of the boom economy went into as many public services as possible.

Freire’s overall argument is that California just plain spends too much:

In other words, the panel doesn’t even need to happen. We know what it’s about because we’ve already seen it: Spend more, spend now, and spend forever. And it’s killing California.

In fact, California has had three straight years of massive spending cuts, and THAT is what is “killing California.” It’s time to bring financial responsibility and economic growth back to California, and our Netroots Nation panel is one place where we can start.

California’s unemployment crisis takes many forms. One of the most pernicious is that it disproportionately impacts young workers, 34% of whom are unemployed in California today (in this case, “young” is defined as ages 16 to 19). Many young workers, unable to go to college and needing to support themselves and their families, are having an extremely difficult time finding work. This not only cripples their financial position here in 2010, but has lasting negative impacts on their lifetime careers and earning potential.

One reason they’re having a hard time finding jobs is that they’re competing against workers who shouldn’t be in the workforce at all. A San Francisco Chronicle article today showed that working seniors outnumber working teens. In the article, “seniors” are defined as people age 65 and older:

For the first time on record, senior citizens outnumber teens in the labor force as the Great Recession accentuates trends that make it harder for young people to find jobs and more likely for older workers to delay retirement….

Experts say that over the past decade older workers have tended to hang on to their paychecks longer, owing to sagging stock portfolios and falling home prices.

This shift toward an aging workforce has been disastrous for 16- to 19-year-olds, who face unemployment rates of 25 percent nationwide and 34 percent in California, similar to the Great Depression.

“It’s killing kids,” said Andrew Sum, director of the center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. “We’re tossing our future into the trash bin.”

This is an absurd situation. Ideally, people over age 65 can exit the workforce. Social Security and Medicare exist in part to ensure seniors have their needs taken care of so that they exit the workforce and open up jobs for younger employees who have a greater need for this work.

But because Social Security benefits haven’t kept pace with the cost of living, because Medicare benefits haven’t kept up either, and as other state programs designed to aid seniors are being cut, seniors are finding it necessary to continue working.

This problem would be compounded if Obama’s Cat Food Commission gets its way, and the Social Security retirement age is raised above 65, keeping even more seniors in the workforce. One policy analyst argued for lowering the Social Security retirement age instead:

Heidi Shierholz with the liberal Economic Policy Institute…thinks a better way to improve job prospects for younger workers is to make Medicare and full Social Security benefits available at age 64 for the next two years to coax more older workers into retirement.

I’d say that needs to be a permanent shift. As Dave Johnson has pointed out, workers age 55-65 are getting hit hard by this recession as well, suffering from a pervasive age bias that can hit workers as young as 40. Lowering the retirement age would help some of the older members of this group find work, while opening more places for younger workers.

Ultimately, we need policies that benefit all workers regardless of age. That includes true universal health care, as well as government job creation programs. But the first rule is “do no harm” – and the Cat Food Commission’s likely recommendation to increase the Social Security retirement age would do a world of harm to American workers, especially to the young, whose futures have been systematically robbed from them in order to sustain a failing system for older workers.