POSITIVELY BLACK

Junious Ricardo Stanton

If Bush Gets His Way on Social Security Watch Out

"No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people." H.L. Mencken

The wires hadn’t cooled on the rigged electronic voting machines before George W Bush was claiming he had a "mandate" to spend his electoral capital and telling his supporters he planned to reform Social Security. AmeriKKKans have such a short memory — this is the scion of a wealthy plutocratic family with a long history of ripping off the AmeriKKKan people.

Since the corporate mind control apparatus eschews serious investigative reporting into political corruption and corporate malfeasance it may be unreasonable for me to expect the public to know what is going on in their communities and nation. But by now we should know we can’t trust the Bushes. The thing that scares me about Bush overhauling Social Security is, if George W. Bush does to Social Security what he did to the tax payers in Texas to build a new stadium for the Texas Rangers Baseball Team and what his father George H.W. Bush and two brothers Neil and Jeb did to the Savings and Loan industry, AmeriKKKans who invest their hard earned cash into Bush’s privatized market based Social Security system, will get screwed big time!

The corporate owned mind control apparatus rarely if ever mentions how Neil Bush ripped off the Silverado Savings and Loan invertors, shareholders and U.S. taxpayers for billions of dollars. Nor did they report extensively how George H.W. Bush and son Jeb helped rip off the folks at Florida’s Broward Federal Savings and Loan Association to the cost of millions that U.S. taxpayers had to cover. The corruption was facilitated by the Reagan and Bush administrations’ push for the deregulation of major industries such as telecommunications, media, banking and airlines. The result was wholesale consolidation, thievery and corruption.

Now George W. Bush wants to restructure the Social Security System. He and his merry band of fascists control both the House and Senate and they probably will pull off another heist like they pulled off another stolen election last month. The corporate mind control apparatus is beating the drum for Social Security "reform" like they did for the Invasion of Iraq. Their job is to parrot the official party line, "the Social Security Fund is going broke".

This is being done to justify (If Bush and his family’s pattern holds true to form) the coming boondoggle for the super rich and Wall Street investors and a major bust for the working class. The Social security system is under stress because the federal government is raiding its’ coffers transferring money into the U.S. treasury’s general fund to disguise the size of already humongous federal deficits. The truth is while more "baby boomers" will begin to retire and draw Social Security in the next few years the system has enough money to grant benefits tied to inflation for the next forty years or so.

What bush proposes is transferring money (either directly from the Social Security fund or via more borrowing) to set up a new system of savings whereby you invest a portion of your wages into an account of your choosing. This sounds good but the thing we have to remember is Social Security is not currently tied to the stock market. Whether during boom or bust the checks come on a monthly basis. If you sink your money into a Wall Street driven account it will be susceptible to market fluctuation and manipulation. During the good times you will earn interest but if the market goes down or (and this is a very real possibility given the criminal proclivities of the Bush cabal) if there is a Harken an Enron or Saving and Loan Association rip off scenario you could lose everything.

For the little guy the stock market is a con game. Most working class folks haven’t the faintest idea how it works. Moreover unlike Social Security which is a form of socialism that created a safety net for the most needy, a market based individual retirement account could be disastrous, especially for working class folks. Remember what just happened to so many 401K programs over the last four years. In a paper entitled Let us Count The Ways, The Costs of Social Security Privatization Are In The Details, the authors Christian E. Weller and Jeffrey B. Wenger say, " The link between the labor market and individual accounts essentially punishes women and minorities twice.

For one, they have lower lifetime earnings than men and whites and thus proportionately lower savings. Second, they accumulate fewer savings for each dollar they put away because of greater fluctuations in employment and wages. Social Security is the only way to reduce the labor market risks. In the current setup, benefits do not depend on the performance of the stock market. Furthermore, Social Security pays proportionately higher benefits to low lifetime earners than to high lifetime ones." In other words from a working class perspective, Social Security is a greater and safer benefit and less risky than Bush’s proposed reform. If we look at the Bush record, we have to ask ourselves (despite his rhetoric) have any of his schemes benefited us?

He lied about WMD in Iraq, the Medicare prescription plan is a boondoggle for the pharmaceutical companies and the new Bill tacks on a 17% increase that most seniors can’t afford. Add to that Bush tried to take away hazardous duty pay for the soldiers his lies have put in harms way and you see why I have major problems with his scheme to undo the liberal legacy of the New Deal.

Bush has already run up record deficits with no end in sight. His perpetual wars and his Social Security scheme would add to them. Especially if he has to borrow to start the new program! Alas Bush and the privatization lobbyists control the both legislatures so don’t expect much in the way of concern for working folks interests. Lastly if Bush handles the revamping of Social Security like he’s handled the Harken deal or the invasion, occupation and "reconstruction" of Iraq, look for a major mess, massive scandals and rip offs.