"The plot to steal our future", the drive by America's ruling elite to slash Social Security.

[another saigon]

http://socialistworker.org/print/2010/09/13/plot-to-steal-our-future



September 13, 2010

CLOSED-DOOR meetings in Washington, attended by a carefully chosen collection of America's corporate and political elite. The crusade of a megalomaniac billionaire, and the un-scrutinized activities of his supposedly philanthropic foundation. Political agendas and records obscured by a manipulated media. The fates and futures of hundreds of millions of people on the line.

Sounds like the ingredients of a cheesy thriller, right?

Think again. This is exactly what's happening in Washington today with the campaign to wreck the Social Security system for current and future retirees.

The long-held obsession of some U.S. political and corporate leaders to make deep cuts in Social Security and impose other measures aimed at cutting working-class living standards is closer to reality than it's ever been, thanks to a Democratic president and a Congress controlled by the so-called "party of working people." <1>

The vehicle for this conspiracy to carry out measures that would cause an uproar if they were exposed to the light of day is the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, established by President Barack Obama by executive order after an attempt by two senators to create a congressional commission failed.

Obama promised as a candidate that he would back such a body--to make the "hard decisions" about government spending and taxes that politicians avoid. Supposedly, every proposal is "on the table" in the commission's deliberations about how to tackle the federal budget deficit and the financial future of government programs like Social Security.

But no one expects the commission to recommend, for example, significant reductions in Pentagon spending as a way to balance the budget. To make sure it didn't, Obama appointed David Cote as the one commission member who's closely associated with the issue of defense spending--that is, with increasing defense spending, especially to the company he runs, Honeywell, one of the Pentagon's biggest contractors.

On the other hand, the commission is stacked with advocates of cutting Social Security benefits--the kind of proposal that's very popular among the leaders of both the Republican and Democratic Parties, but that gets derailed when legislation comes before Congress and lawmakers start feeling popular pressure.

So the work of slashing a program that tens of millions of Americans depend on when they become too old to keep working has been delegated to the unelected commission.

[msongs]

1. democrats' strongest issue prostituted by the current administration unless something changes soon n

[Enthusiast]

12. Millions of American

voters (myself included) will forever hold President Obama responsible for any cuts or damage to social security. He has to know this.

[lib2DaBone]

2. The last remaining leg of FDR's New Deal....

They HATE FDR and all he stood for. If they can kill Social Security... they will have wiped out the last traces of social safety nets.

After SS they will kill the G.I. Bill, ADA and the Civil Rights Bill... the sweep will be complete.

We are living in Germany... September 1932.

[Recursion]

6. Hitler increased social programs spending

It was in response to an austerity plan that he managed to get enough votes to engineer his takeover.

The Nazi's economic policies were more piecemeal and opportunistic than coming from a central plan, but their original demands included "the abolition of all incomes unearned by work," "the ruthless confiscation of all war profits," "the nationalization of all businesses which have been formed into corporations," "profit-sharing in large enterprises," "extensive development of insurance for old-age," and "land reform suitable to our national requirements". Although Hitler was probably being more honest when he said "The basic feature of our economic theory is that we have no theory at all."

[ipaint]

3. Obama chose to do this to workers.

What ever the consequences he owns them 100%.


This secret, anti democratic, anti worker cat food commission has no legitimacy.

[another saigon]

5. yes indeed he did

the defense of this scurrilous, greedy, elitist cat food commission, especially obama's keeping simpson, is abhorrent.
God, please wake me from this nightmare.

:(

[indepat]

4. No one, for example, expects the Commission to recommend restoring the tax rates to pre-Reagan days,

I would bet a huge bundle. ;)

[ipaint]

7. Millionaires and billionaires will only do what is best for their class.

If (a big if) that happens to coincide with an unintended benefit to workers then hooray. Otherwise they will steal you blind every time.

FDR was an aberration. We are way past one rich man in political power changing things in fundamental ways for workers. The political system is too corrupt. Any change will have to come from outside and it will be attacked violently by the elite in power.

[NJmaverick]

8. It sounds like a work of fiction, because that is exactly what this article is

the commission has no power, a point ignored by the author of this tripe.

[ipaint]

10. Yes that up or down vote in the house of reps and senate

ought to be pretty interesting come dec.

Secret meetings, secret agendas, no representation from the working class allowed and an up or down vote with no discussion allowed.

You have to be pretty f*cking naive, to put it nicely, to think anything that comes out of the CAT FOOD COMMISSION is in the best interest of the majority of workers who earn 50,000 or less in this country.

But Obama apparently thought Pete Peterson, the billionaire anti social security RW asshole, had a pretty good idea that needed to be put into action, in secret of course. Wouldn't want the lesser working class folks to bother their pretty little minds with the nasty details only the elite can fully understand.

[lonestarnot]

11. Old people will have to eat them for lunch.

[senseandsensibility]

9. k and r

eom

[blindpig]

13. k&r

[JCMach1]

14. And yet everyone laughed at Gore's lock box...

:grr:

[MichiganVote]

15. Riot. We'll riot. And we'll riot in well to do burgs.