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BUSH DECLARES"OWNERSHIP SOCIETY"TELLS CONVENTION HE’S ORDERED INVASION OF SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND

by Open-Publishing - Friday 3 September 2004
3 comments

PRESIDENT DECLARES "OWNERSHIP SOCIETY"
TELLS CONVENTION HE’S ORDERED INVASION OF SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND

by Greg Palast

New York - Of all the bone-headed, whacky, breathtakingly threatening schemes George W. Bush is trying to sell us in his acceptance speech tonight is something he and his handlers call, "the Ownership Society." Sounds cool, "ownership." Everyone gets a piece of the action. Everyone’s a winner as the economy zooms. All boats rise.

Sure. Behind the hooray-for-free-enterprise crapola is that dog-eared game-plan to siphon off Social Security revenues to pay for making Bush’s tax cuts for the rich permanent.

Here’s what the President has in mind. Social Security is an insurance plan. You pay in, you get back. But it’s hard to get your money back when there’s a war where the Clinton surplus used to be. It’s not the war on terror, or the war in Iraq, though Lord knows those have cost us a bundle with nothing to show for all the lost loot. I’m talking about the class war that Dubya and his Dick Cheney have waged on the average working person.

We’re talking an economic Pearl Harbor here. While firemen and policemen went running into falling buildings, the Bushmen were preparing to relieve some gazillionaires, such as say, the Bush family, of the need to pay the taxes that the rest of us pay. Work as a teacher, you pay Social Security and income taxes on every darn penny. Sit on your yacht and speculate in the stock market casino and you are off the hook on taxes on the "capital gains."

Bill Clinton proposed putting his big surpluses into a Social Security "lock-box" for that predictable rainy day. But tonight, Bush instead proposes to give the stock-options class a boost by lopping off a chunk of Social Security insurance revenue for gambling in the stock market. He had this same idea in 2000. If he’d had his way on his inauguration day, the average "owner" in America, investing in the stock market, would be 7% poorer, many flat busted. Some "security." Happy elderly "owners" would be hunting for lunch in the garbage cans under Madison Square Garden.

Here’s the latest report from the front lines of the class war: The World Bank reports the USA has more millionaires than ever — we’ll see them at the Garden tonight. Median household income’s down — most of us are median — while the bottom has fallen out for those at the bottom. Our poorest 20% have seen incomes drop by a fifth. America’s upper one percent now own 53% of all the shares in the market.

And now the uppers want to crack open your retirement piggy bank, cut some of your retirement benefits, then "allow" you to give them the remainder of your money to fund their latest stock float schemes.

If betting trillions on stock market ponies doesn’t produce a big win, what does Mr. Bush propose to do with all the hungry old folk? I think I heard George say, "Let them eat Enron certificates."

And the future market fall, Mr. President, is a slam-dunk certainty. Let’s do the math. OK, class, we all buy stock this afternoon to fund our retirement. In fifteen years, baby-boomers are ready to kick back, take it easy and retire on the stock they’re about to sell. Did I say, "SELL"? And HOW. Around 2020, tens of millions of "owners" will be selling their shares ... to whom? CRRRRASH!

A deliberate policy of aiming for another 1929 is appropriate for the top-hat and pinky-ring party of Herbert Hoover.

The big problem is that supposedly non-partisan and even Democratic poobahs are rushing to "reform" Social Security. We have Alan Greenspan, who has barely a word to say about the multi-trillion dollar deficit wrought by Mr. Bush’s tax cuts, yet is already warning about some disaster in Social Security based on "trends." Well, if we go by his own trend, the Fed chief will soon be marrying a 12-year-old Girl Scout.

Hey, Alan, back to Economics 101 for you. As the boomers hit retirement age, we’re going to need added borrowing for transfer payments like Social Security to maintain purchasing power to keep the economy alive while millions of old folk dump assets.

Listen, Mr. President, we had an "ownership" society once before. Luckily, it came to an end when Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=367&row=0

Forum posts

  • We seniors who own this society are not getting a free ride. To pay for the drug discount cards and other free candy, next year Bush is increasing the Medicare premium deduction from our Social Security payments BY SEVENTEEN PERCENT!!! From Reuters —

    "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Older Americans will have to pay about 17 percent more next year — the largest increase in Medicare’s history — for their government-run health insurance, U.S. officials announced on Friday.

    Starting in January, the elderly will pay $78.20 per month for non-hospital services, up $11.60 from $66.60 this year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said. The nearly $80 premium follows the largest annual hike since Medicare began nearly 40 years ago.

    According to CMS records, the hike is the largest annual increase since Medicare was established nearly 40 years ago.

    +++

    At least the pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies will be able to make a profit, heal the sick, and create more work for 1.5 million paper shufflers.

  • Has everyone forgotten that when Bush ran for office he touted Wall Streets advertisement about how Social Security was not going to take care of you in your retirement and that you should hurry and empty your megar savings accounts and go buy stock......well, we all know where that idea went and how many older people now not only won’t be able to count on social security that they paid into all of their adult lives, but their savings that went to Bush’s plan to buy stock turned into a massive ponzie scheme. I believe that if Bush and the likes of Alan Greenspan think for one New York minute that they are going to steal people’s social security money to finance their warmongering and leave us some I.O.U’s or worse pretend that it wasn’t our money they stole, they are going to have rebellion in this country. It might be just the thing that will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and Americans will revolt and overthrow this corrupt government. Has everyone forgotten the so called "lock-box" Bush said he was going to put on our money????? Pass the word if these Bastards try to take away our hard earned money we will go after them and I don’t mean politics....we’ll give them the ol Moussolini treatment.....

  • Who can forget Bush telling the country to "go shopping" after 9/11. That mantra has been articulated often and in many ways over the past 3+ years by BushCo, Inc. It’s darn near taken on "religious" overtones with the Bush bunch.

    The "housing bubble" deliberately created by the Bush team and Alan Greenspan to try and lesson the impact of the stock market bubble going "pop."

    As a result, housing prices are highly over valued; personal debt is at an all time high as are personal banckruptcies. Creating "health savings accounts" will add more funds for speculators to gamble with while the reduced monies into Social Security will in effect end social security.

    What BushCo has set into motion economically in terms of what Palast describes, and the housing bubble that has been a result of the failed economics of theirs is pretty much going to have it’s intended purpose—to break the piggy back of the U.S. Treasury so as to force the cancillation of all social spending, period—"Starve the Beast" as Gingrich and others state it.

    When the housing bubble goes "pop" (by this summer) and all those that have been persuaded to take out 2nd mortages on their property which has been the primary driving force of the economy for the past three years—consumer spending thru increased debt loads—the negative economic impact will be devastating.

    There are still things that can be done to get us on more solid economic footing with a change in Washington—as far as the housing bubble is concerned and what will be the negative economic impact, Kerry will not be able to do anything about. A second term with Bush on the other hand will insure that the "pop" will be dramatic.

    If we do not get back to being a nation of producers instead of a nation of consumers, we will not have a nation. At least not one we will recognize, of that I am certain.

    Jack Dalton
    www.ommp.org