The *Real* Reason Bush Wants to Attack Social Security?

[Calvinist Basset]

Quote:

"The theory that new taxes and regulation would inevitably hamper economic growth and destroy America exerted a powerful hold on the minds of the business establishment and the economic right in the 1930s—just as it does today. FDR's proposals seemed to fly in the face of everything these experts knew about how the economy works. In particular, FDR upended the hallowed equation: taxes and regulation equals tyranny and depression."

Read more by following the link below:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2112796/

[BrklynLiberal]

1. Because they have already stolen all the money from the SS trust

fund, and if they "privatize" it...they won't have to worry about repaying what they have stolen.

[dbeach]

3. More pay-offs form bush to wall st..

cuz bushthe freeloader has a free ride.
Its in the veins of blue bloods like bush..'"Divine right of Kings"

[davidwparker]

4. That sounds like it to me. Plus, the Bush crime family

hates FDR.

[suston96]

2. Another real reason....

Arthur Schlesinger also wrote of the rare Republican Congress elected in 1946 which passed what became the Twenty Second Amendment - limiting the president to two terms.

Schlesinger writes that the Republicans did this in bitter revenge against the dead Roosevelt who had been elected President by the American people four times.

Personally, I believe Bush and the republicans are using the Social Security assault as a diversion to keep the American people desensitized to another stolen election.

The attempts to kill Social Security and Medicare are so politically explosive that the probability of an ulterior motive or diversion is very real.

[dbeach]

5. Bush stratergy is keep changing the topic

as they jump from crime to crime and bribe or murder their way through our lives...

bush is suerly the envy of every crimnal in history and thats an understatement.
legal crooks above the law with nukes in their hands and threats on their lips...hitler must be proud of nazi prescott bush grandson..

[Tux]

22. New admendment

Arthur Schlesinger also wrote of the rare Republican Congress elected in 1946 which passed what became the Twenty Second Amendment - limiting the president to two terms.

That is why I don't like this Marriage Protection Admendment since it may allow presidents to have more than 2 terms, ban liberlas, make Christianity the only religion, or make Bush president for life. Oh the possibilities...

[Coastie for Truth]

6. One thing these self styled champions of bare knuckles capitalism forget

America was on the ropes--

1. Communist, Socialist, Nazi, and KKK mayors, council members, legislators.

2. Father Coughlin and Bundists parading in the streets.

3. The Tulsa Race Riots (okay, 1921)

4. The Bonus Army March on the Capital --- and MacArthur's attack on the Bonus Army -- 1932.

5. As the word slipped into chaos and war -- every other democracy went fascist or socialist - even the UK.

6. The US was the only western democracy that survived.

And, it wasn't Divine Providence

It was FDR and the New Deal

[Dirk39]

14. But some tried to destroy it:

THE BUSINESS PLOT TO OVERTHROW ROOSEVELT

"In the summer of 1933, shortly after Roosevelt's "First 100 Days," America's richest businessmen were in a panic. It was clear that Roosevelt intended to conduct a massive redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor. Roosevelt had to be stopped at all costs.

The answer was a military coup. It was to be secretly financed and organized by leading officers of the Morgan and Du Pont empires. This included some of America's richest and most famous names of the time:

* Irenee Du Pont - Right-wing chemical industrialist and founder of the American Liberty League, the organization assigned to execute the plot.
* Grayson Murphy - Director of Goodyear, Bethlehem Steel and a group of J.P. Morgan banks.
* William Doyle - Former state commander of the American Legion and a central plotter of the coup.
* John Davis - Former Democratic presidential candidate and a senior attorney for J.P. Morgan.
* Al Smith - Roosevelt's bitter political foe from New York. Smith was a former governor of New York and a codirector of the American Liberty League.
* John J. Raskob - A high-ranking Du Pont officer and a former chairman of the Democratic Party. In later decades, Raskob would become a "Knight of Malta," a Roman Catholic Religious Order with a high percentage of CIA spies, including CIA Directors William Casey, William Colby and John McCone.
* Robert Clark - One of Wall Street's richest bankers and stockbrokers.
* Gerald MacGuire - Bond salesman for Clark, and a former commander of the Connecticut American Legion. MacGuire was the key recruiter to General Butler.

The plotters attempted to recruit General Smedley Butler to lead the coup. They selected him because he was a war hero who was popular with the troops. The plotters felt his good reputation was important to make the troops feel confident that they were doing the right thing by overthrowing a democratically elected president. However, this was a mistake: Butler was popular with the troops because he identified with them. That is, he was a man of the people, not the elite. When the plotters approached General Butler with their proposal to lead the coup, he pretended to go along with the plan at first, secretly deciding to betray it to Congress at the right moment.

What the businessmen proposed was dramatic: they wanted General Butler to deliver an ultimatum to Roosevelt. Roosevelt would pretend to become sick and incapacitated from his polio, and allow a newly created cabinet officer, a "Secretary of General Affairs," to run things in his stead. The secretary, of course, would be carrying out the orders of Wall Street. If Roosevelt refused, then General Butler would force him out with an army of 500,000 war veterans from the American Legion. But MacGuire assured Butler the cover story would work:(...)

http://www.huppi.com/kangaroo/Coup.htm

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[aneerkoinos]

16. Huh?

Peculiar definitions about democracy and socialism.

If UK, Sweden, Switzerland, Canada, Finland etc. went socialist, then so did US with its New Deal socialism.

So either US "democracy" didn't survive, or US was not the only western democracy that survived.

[roseBudd]

7. The memme should be: And there has not been a depression since

FDR

[punpirate]

8. Nope...

... it was all about profits and who got the wealth of the country. The wealthy believed they were entitled to it all. FDR upset their applecart. Beginning with McKinley, the wealthy in the country had bought the government, lock, stock and barrel. They expected that to go on in perpetuity, but FDR came along and spoiled their plans. They never forgave him for it, and shortly after FDR was inaugurated began plans for the military to overthrow the government and install a panel of businessmen to run the government--fascism in its purest form.

It was never about the moneyed right's fear that FDR would destroy the country, although they often intimated such. It was actually about the diminishment of their power and the fettering of their ability to accrue all the wealth of the country to themselves.

It's always been about raw avarice, nothing more, nothing less.

Cheers.

[beltanefauve]

9. Cheers to you too!

Great post!

[stevebreeze]

18. absolutely! it is ALWAYS about who profits and who pays

The wealthy think they are entitled to their vast wealth because of their moral and intellectual superiority. Truth is they have used the political system to buy them selves more democracy then us ordinary working folk have. They have used the legal bribery of campaign funding to get more wealth/power.

This is entirely what privatizing SS is about. It is a regressive tax but has a progressive benefit structure. With private accounts you get what you put in and not a penny more. So die early and leave your heirs some chump change of live long and learn to enjoy cat food. The wealthy have no responsibility to society in their isolated little world of gated communities.

There is a far better way to fix the SS shortfall. Use government to empower working people to earn more. Raise the minimum wage! Card check unionization. make taxes more progressive! According to the SS trustees number growth in the lower 80% of the populations wages would fix the slight problem of funding easy!

[dweller]

10. the *real* reason

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0127/p09s01-coop.htm

"But there was a twist: Knowing that the baby boomers would begin retiring around 2010, Mr. Greenspan recommended raising payroll taxes
by much more than was needed to pay benefits at the time. The surplus would be used to buy Treasury bonds, which could be redeemed
when the boomers retired and payroll taxes were no longer sufficient to fully fund retirement benefits.

This is where the second twist comes in. Because the surplus payroll taxes were handed over to the federal government (in return for
Treasury bonds), this meant ordinary income taxes could be kept low. After all, the federal government has a fixed need for money, and if it
gets excess money from payroll taxes it can afford to keep income taxes lower than they'd otherwise be.

But the payroll tax is a flat tax, paid disproportionately by low and middle income workers. The income tax is a progressive tax and is paid
disproportionately by high earners.

So this was the implicit bargain in the reforms recommended by Greenspan and signed into law by Reagan: From 1983 to 2018, low- and
middle-income earners would pay excess payroll taxes. This allowed income taxes to be kept low, and primarily benefited high earners.

Then, beginning in 2018, instead of raising payroll taxes to pay for baby-boomer retirement benefits, Social Security would begin selling its
bonds back to the government.

To pay for those bonds, income taxes would be raised - high earners would begin paying higher income taxes."


simple as that...thus *moron uses 2018 as the year of the 'crisis'...it's the taxes.

dp

[Stockholm]

11. It tried to kill his daddy? n/t

[AlabamaYankee]

12. It's a smokescreen

While everybody's getting all exercised about Social Security, the maladministration is busily dismantling Employer-funded health insurance. This will have a much broader cost to the people, and a much more immediate return to the party's corporate sponsors.

[Raster]

13. No doubt about it. It's well past time for the Second American Revolution

[Wright Patman]

15. The First American Revolution

was in itself a revolt of the elites in colonial America at King George for what they considered confiscatory taxation without representation. The Founding Fathers, except for agrarian reformers like Jefferson, had more in common with the oligarchy trying to depose FDR than they did with the middle class.

Revolutions from the lowest economic classes often don't succeed and just create a big bloody mess as the inevitable crackdown proceeds apace for the next several years afterwards.

As we have recently seen, "revolutions" at the ballot box are now impossible. Moreover, the mind control on the fundy base, many of whom are nearly destitute already, is so effective that there doesn't even need to be any election fraud to keep them on the reservation.

[IrateCitizen]

17. It's simply because it's a government program that WORKS

And it has worked very well since its inception toward its intended purpose.

Therefore, according to the logic of the likes of Grover Norquist and Stephen Moore, it must be destroyed. It must be destroyed because it is a contradiction to their strict ideology that the "market" is the only viable arbiter in our nation, and should be left to its own devices -- no matter its excesses or injustices.

It's pure ideology, plain and simple. Bush is simply trying to fulfill a scheme that the moneyed right has been planning ever since the inception of SS.

[War Pigs]

19. Every man for himself? Buy a security system

:mad:

[sandnsea]

20. Social Security is Communist

That's what they think. If they break that, Medicare, Medicaid, Pell Grants, etc.; the rest tumbles like dominoes. That simple.

[stevebreeze]

21. they already think they have destroyed Medicare.

by giving the drug companies giant subsidies and not controlling the cost.

I believe that they have set the stage for universal health care, as soon we will have to get control of all health care spending and universal single payer is the one system that works.