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This brought me to reflection , and to the question : What are the peculiar causes that could bring about such a condition of society ? Liebman : Earlier this year my coauthors and I were feeling frustrated about the tone of the Social Security reform debate , so I got together with Andrew Samwick , who had been chief economist on the staff of President Bush ’ s council of economic advisors , and Maya McGuineas , who had been the Social Security advisor to Senator McCain ’ s 2000 presidential campaign . But few of them were visible , and these ten times larger ( as well as I could judge , ) than they seem to the inhabitants of the earth . The greater part of them were in a state of evident eruption , and gave me fearfully to understand their fury and their power , by the repeated thunders [ page 41 :] of the mis-called meteoric stones , which now rushed upwards by the balloon with a frequency more and more appalling . " It is hardly incumbent upon me to review the relations which I occupy to my companions in misfortune . Had the balloon remained a very short while longer within the cloud — that is to say , had not the inconvenience of getting wet , determined me to discharge the ballast — my destruction might , and probably would , have been the consequence . But if I were to answer it as shortly and as curtly as it is answered by its enemies , I would say it is preventing somebody else from taking your property . But the ; aeronaut , still greatly discomposed , and having apparently no further business to detain him in Rotterdam , began at this moment to make busy preparations for departure ; and , it being necessary to discharge a portion of ballast to enable him to reascend , the half dozen bags which he threw out , one after another , without taking the trouble to empty their contents , tumbled , every one of them , most unfortunately , upon the back of the burgomaster , and rolled him over and over no less than half a dozen times , in the face of every individual in Rotterdam . This the faint light enabled me to perceive — but the features of his face I could not distinguish .