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*cracks fingers*
Let’s get started, shall we?
| quote: | CHRONWATCH.COM ^ | MARCH 11, 2005 | CHRISTOPHER ADAMO
http://www.chronwatch.com/content/c...y.asp?aid=13501
If Americans of all ages ever recognize the degree to which they’ve been conned by the proponents of failed government programs such as Social Security, they will likely respond in a manner reminiscent of the Boston Tea Party. And it is not hard to imagine a few career politicians floating in the harbor alongside of King George’s cargo.,br> |
Amazing how the most successful insurance program our government has ever created, bringing some 40% of the elderly out of poverty prior to its creation, currently giving benefits that raise nearly 13 million American seniors out of poverty, cutting the share of seniors who are poor from nearly one in two to one in twelve is somehow labeled a “con”.
http://www.cbpp.org/2-4-05socsec.htm
Boy this douchebag spinmeister’s off to a great start.
| quote: | | Consider the caterwauling from Democrats in response to President Bush’s efforts to reform Social Security. |
“Reform” my fucking ass. Bush is out to destroy it, period. This has been the GOP wet dream all along:
| quote: | --Remember the resurrected CATO Institute paper from 1983 laying out a "Leninist Strategy" to phase out Social Security?
--Remember Peter Wehner's January 3rd memo stating "For the first time in six decades, the Social Security battle is one we can win -- and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country"?
--And when Stephen Moore, formerly of the Club For Hair Growth declares that "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," is there any doubt as to what he's referring to?
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?pt=3SS...Azp6iM41Q%3D%3D |
His plan does NOTHING, ABSOFUCKINGLUTELY NOTHING to help the solvency of the program, which he freely concedes as did the GAO. In fact, it only hastens the financial problems of SS:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ht...3_social10.html
Pushing that “Doomsday” date of 2018 to 2012, according to the latest date by Chief Actuary to the SSA, Stephen Goss in his February 3, 2005 memorandum called, “Preliminary Estimated Effects of a Proposal to Phase In Personal Accounts”. If you can somehow explain how this assists the solvency problem, please let me know. Furthermore, his plan to divert benefits from wage indexing to price indexing would drastically cut benefits all around, according to the CBO:
http://www.cbpp.org/2-2-05socsec4.htm
And BTW, the CBO puts that date to 2020. Keeps getting pushed back –strange that.
It does, however, add anywhere between $1-$2 trillion to our deficit in the next 2 years:
http://www.csss.gov/
http://www.cbpp.org/12-13-04socsec.htm
And according to CBO figures, we’ll need to borrow approx. $15 trillion to fund Bush’s scheme project over 40 years.
So how is that going to help our children of the future – giving them a monumental deficit already to pay back, and throw in a few extra trillions of dollars for them to cover as well?
| quote: | | Originally promoted as merely a retirement supplement, Franklin Roosevelt’s scheme initially involved a minuscule payroll tax. |
No, it wasn’t promoted “merely” as a retirement supplement, asshole. Take a look at what Franklin said after signing the SS Act into law:
| quote: | Today a hope of many years' standing is in large part fulfilled. The civilization of the past hundred years, with its startling industrial changes, has tended more and more to make life insecure. Young people have come to wonder what would be their lot when they came to old age. The man with a job has wondered how long the job would last.
This social security measure gives at least some protection to thirty millions of our citizens who will reap direct benefits through unemployment compensation, through old-age pensions and through increased services for the protection of children and the prevention of ill health.
We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.
This law, too, represents a cornerstone in a structure which is being built but is by no means complete. It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It will act as a protection to future Administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.
I congratulate all of you ladies and gentlemen, all of you in the Congress, in the executive departments and all of you who come from private life, and I thank you for your splendid efforts in behalf of this sound, needed and patriotic legislation.
If the Senate and the House of Representatives in this long and arduous session had done nothing more than pass this Bill, the session would be regarded as historic for all time.
http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/HOP/FDR.html |
Now does that sound like he’s promoting a retirement supplement, or an insurance safety net for everyone should they unfortunately come to that point?
| quote: | | Once implemented however, the road was clear to incrementally grow the program in scope and cost, eventually burdening American workers with a thirteen percent confiscation from every dollar they earn. |
Actually it only burdens the worker 6.2%, and is matched by the business industry 6.2% as well. I guess he’s rounding up, and lumping it altogether, but oh well – who’s countin’ for this guy? And let’s also keep in mind that this regressive payroll tax inacted in ’83.
| quote: | | Politicians in Washington quickly recognized that intake from taxpayers would, for a time, exceed expenditures. So, in a manner sufficient to earn any Enron executive a trip to the slammer, Congress soon began pillaging the fund, using the money to supplement its insatiable quest for pork. Worse yet, it then covered its actions with a lie of unfathomable proportions. |
Then why don’t we do a “locked box” as Gore once said? I won’t make excuses of former presidents Reagan, Bush, and Clinton, but why is our current President and his GOP Congress raiding the Trust Fund to support his tax cuts (3x more expensive than SS over 75 yr. projection) and a war of choice? Because other presidents did it, it’s logically reasonable to assume he should too, even during a monumental deficit which HE created?
| quote: | Ostensibly, such violation of public trust is assuaged by the substitution of IOU’s, offered as a “guarantee” of repayment. Consider the abject absurdity of this concept, and how it exemplifies the unbridled contempt with which these politicians regard the American people.
Not even worth the paper it is written on, any government issued “IOU” simply concedes the fact that monies were indeed appropriated, and that sooner or later, somebody will be forced to repay them. Since governments cannot create wealth, and only possess that which can be forcibly extorted from the citizens, those promissory notes hold no monetary value whatsoever. Instead, they are nothing more than confessions of the original theft. If they are to be repaid, it will be by the very same citizenry—or its grandchildren—that was overtaxed to create the surplus in the first place. |
How did I know this hack would resort to the old “worthless IOUs” line? Problems run rampid with his silly argument.
1. If we are to believe that Treasury Bonds are “worthless IOUs”, this runs counter to our history:
The U.S. has never defaulted on Treasury Bonds in its 200 year history. Why would we start now?
2. It would also run counter to the 14th Amendment to do so:
| quote: | Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
http://www.nps.gov/malu/documents/amend14.htm |
3. It would also be quite devastating to the world economy, whom we give Treasury Bonds to in order to support our spending habits. As the NYTimes Jan. 10th editorial states:
| quote: | If the trust fund’s Treasury securities are worthless, someone better tell investors throughout the world, who currently hold $4.3 trillion in Treasury debt that carries the exact same government obligation to pay as the trust fund securities.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/10/opinion/10mon1.html |
4. And Bush himself would have a bit of a credit problem since he tends to invest in our Treasury Bonds as well:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pfds/pfd...008072_2003.pdf
| quote: | | Meanwhile, political operatives are having a field day dipping into the coffers, essentially robbing from one citizen in order to purchase the loyalty of another. It is perhaps the biggest deception of the twentieth century to portray Social Security surpluses as anything other than a supplemental income tax, further burdening the citizenry while enabling big-government liberal Democrats from both parties to perpetuate their “business as usual.” |
Oh gimme a fucking break! This is “burdening” the citizens? “Purchasing the loyalty”?
Are we talking about the Republicans or the Democrats here? Sounds a helluva lot more like the former. And how does one describe the fucking huge ass deficit created largely by this President’s tax cuts? If he considers SS a bit “burdensome”, then the tax cuts moneywise are nothing shy of scandalous.
| quote: | | Thus, the phony outrage among liberals, intent on maintaining the system in its present form, offers proof of their real loyalties. |
Oh, you mean by not jumping on board the “crisis” boat? Better tell that to the faint-hearted Republicans who can’t sell this crisis to their respective states and districts. Anyone really wondering why Bush’s numbers on this SS crap idea of his has been tanking? Is that the Democrats fault, or is it perhaps the public simply doesn’t buy his bullshit?
| quote: | | And politicians who piously suggest another tax hike as some sort of corrective action are merely showing themselves to be willing to continue the theft, not only from this generation, but from future generations, until such time that the public wakes up to the sham. |
That’s honestly what I find to be the most hilarious amount of bullshit yet. What exactly is a “tax hike” at this point in the game? Is rolling back the ridiculous tax cuts for the top 1%, which would contribute greatly towards the solvency SS considered a “tax hike”? Maybe, just maybe that fucking tax cut for the most affluent shouldn’t have been there in the first place, considering it does nothing to help our economy (and actually hurts it by increasing the deficit).
IOW, how could we be intellectually honest by calling something a “tax hike” on a tax cut which, IMO shouldn’t have been there in the first place (at least the 2nd tax cut)?
| quote: | | Such underhanded tactics are the lifeblood of liberalism, |
Did I mention that I think this guy’s a fucking Right-wing hack yet? Just checking.
| quote: | | which on the one hand publicly reviles the evils of capitalism while on the other hand, continually seeks to solidify its access to the lion’s share of the fruits. |
Ahh yes, branding all liberals into that lovely “anti-capitalist” circle. Nothing new, really. And quite the straw man attack.
We’re not attacking capitalism – if it could assist the fiscal solvency of SS, then that would be worth putting on the table.
It doesn’t however. The Republicans know it. We know it. Bush damn well knows it. And the public is increasingly becoming more aware of it too.
And besides – we have nothing against capitalism and stock market investments. 401Ks and other associated retirement funds have been around and do us just as well as conservatives. We just don’t want to take money out of SS, thereby greatly hurting the program, and place it into another government-owned “private account.”
| quote: | | Is it any wonder that liberals vehemently oppose revamping the system into a form that would allow average people some measure of independence, and would eventually force the system to become honest and accountable? |
Both cute and highly misleading. There’s plenty of “independence” where you put your money – 401Ks, stock market, IRAs, mutual funds, you take your pick.
But at the heart of this last argument is the real true thesis of privatizers – they just don’t like being a part of a society and assisting the society as a whole. They don’t want to fucking pay for anything, regardless of how much that particular program or system has greatly increased the numbers out of poverty and kept them there.
All I have to say to you true privatizers is this-
Too fucking bad.
You don’t like contributing to the safety net insurance program that has greatly helped the elderly and disabled as a whole, tough. Move out of the country if your heart desires. I really don't fucking care.
| quote: | | Perhaps the common citizens, particularly those who rely heavily on Social Security for their sustenance, can be forgiven for their anxiety. But those politicians echoing such alarmist rhetoric are either grossly incompetent of the fiscal reality, or shamefully disingenuous and willing to stoke the fears of their constituents in order to keep them in line. |
I did say this guy was a fucking hack, right?
IOW, we can just dismiss those who actually rely on it (the majority of the elderly) for benefits:
http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/i...alsecurityfacts
Let’s go after the liberal politicians who fight for keeping these folks out of poverty, right?
And who the fuck, exactly is “stoking fears” asshole? Who the fuck is doing these ridiculous “Townhall meetings” across the country telling us we’re in a “crisis” or that the system is going “bankrupt”?
And don’t cha just love those Townhall meetings too? I mean, it just seems so uncanny that everyone there is in fully agrees with the President, and there’s no dissenters or anyone there that questions his ideas! It’s like the whole country agrees with him or something!
Those stupid Gallop, CBS, and Zogby polls must be biased or outright lying or something! Either that or Bush is pre-screening people coming into these Townhall meetings in order to help give the impression that so many agree with him.
Surely he wouldn’t do that, would he?
| quote: | | Among the worst collaborators in this ruse is the American Association of Retired Persons, an organization with a fundamental necessity to maintain its symbiotic tie to the governmental status quo. The AARP thrives on the backs of frightened and dependent members, and therefore works to ensure they stay that way. |
Nevermind the fact that the author doesn’t support this bullshit assertion of “frightening” the members in any way.
I was ready for him to say the AARP is against the troops and are pro-gay marriage. I’m actually disappointed he didn’t say that Conservative talking point. Damn!
| quote: | | That is why it cannot sanction any Bush plan, no matter how favorable to future generations, or how thoroughly it protects present recipients from any adverse effects, if such a plan holds even the tiniest possibility of allowing them to disentangle themselves from the debilitating web of dependence on government. |
Well it’s either that or it could possibly be because those old farts have a bigger fucking clue about Bush’s fiscally irresponsible plan and they want no part of it.
Take your pick, I guess.
| quote: | | Every pyramid scheme in existence requires the inclusion of a “bottom tier” of people whose destiny it is to be robbed blind, in order to enrich those above them. Social Security is no different. |
Kinda sounds more like Bush’s tax cuts really.
| quote: | | In the private sector, such schemes are considered criminal. How much more criminal is it for the government to continually subjugate present and future working Americans by fleecing them in this manner? |
Well then tell your fucking King to stop raiding the fucking trust fund for his tax cuts and war of choice then, will you?
Sorry, this guy’s rhetoric is old and tedious. And he needs some serious work on his facts.
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Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
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