that this is just a ploy to pacify the Religious Right?
Theft is nothing new with this bunch .. but, really.
Don't they need the dark of night or something to hide their misdeeds?More >
http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?id=754Here's what the 1936 government pamphlet on Social Security said: "After the first 3 years -- that is to say, beginning in 1940 -- you will pay, and your employer will pay, 1.5 cents for each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. ... Beginning in 1943, you will pay 2 cents, and so will your employer, for every dollar you earn for the next 3 years. ... And finally, beginning in 1949, 12 years from now, you and your employer will each pay 3 cents on each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year."
Here's Congress' lying promise: "That is the most you will ever pay."
Having read the government pamphlet, I consulted Webster's Dictionary. The definition for the word ever contains descriptions like: "at all times," "always" and "at any time." Had Congress lived up to its promise, our maximum Social Security tax this year would be $90 instead of over $6,000. The Social Security Act of 1935 would have never been enacted had Americans back then known that we'd be subject to a $6,000 tax.
Another lie in the Social Security pamphlet is, "Beginning Nov. 24, 1936, the United States government will set up a Social Security account for you. ... The checks will come to you as a right." Americans were led to believe Social Security was like a retirement account and money placed in it was our property. President Clinton, Vice President Gore and their sycophants want you to continue to believe that. The fact of the matter is you have no property right whatsoever to your Social Security "contributions."
You say, "Williams, that's crazy; what do you mean?" ... (ETC.)
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http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2005/02/03/4201b4b25df04Social Security Lies
Guest Room
February 03, 2005
by Mitch Fagen
Fresh into his second term, President George W. Bush wants Congress to approve a plan to partially phase-out Social Security and replace it with private accounts. He says that this is necessary to save the system from disaster and bankruptcy and that young people need his brand of "reform" more than most. "I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act now..." he declared. Social Security will run out of money in the year 2018, his administration warns, and it will face a deficit of $11.5 trillion over an infinite time span. Only the higher returns promised by private stock market accounts can save the system from collapse.
Don't believe any of this. There is no crisis. According to the Congressional Budget Office, whose director was a Bush senior economist, Social Security will be able to pay full benefits until at least 2052. After then it will still be able to pay at least three quarters of scheduled benefits. Because benefits rise in line with wages, which themselves rise faster than inflation, that three quarters will be higher than current Social Security benefits. Our generation will still be paid more than current retirees. (ETC.)
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http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/004451.php Let's address two points. If President Bush is whipping up a phony crisis, as he did during the lead up to Iraq, to shred the social safety net which has made poverty among the elderly close to a thing of the past and provides financial security in the face of premature death, disability and other blows of fate at other points in life, that's a bad thing that should be fought at every opportunity. Opposing it simply cannot be put on the same moral footing as perpetrating it.
On the other hand, if the Democrats are wrong, and there really is a dire crisis, which they are ignoring for political reasons, then they're in the wrong.
The point is that you cannot duck the moral question by ignoring the factual question, which is what the author seems intent on doing in this case, thus creating the standard 'they all do it' moral equivalence. (ETC.)
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