The Wall Street TARP Gang Wants to Take Away Your Social Security by Dean Baker

[Better Believe It]

The Wall Street TARP Gang Wants to Take Away Your Social Security
by Dean Baker
November 9, 2010

This effort is being led by billionaire investment banker Peter Peterson. Mr. Peterson has personally profited to the tune of tens of millions of dollars from the "fund managers' tax subsidy," an obscure provision of the tax code that allows billionaires to pay a lower tax rate than schoolteachers and firefighters. However, Peterson believes in giving back. He has committed $1 billion to an effort that is intended to take away the Social Security benefits that people have worked and paid for.

As part of this effort, Peterson set up a whole new foundation, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. He and/or his foundation created a "news service," the Fiscal Times, which is intended to promote the view that we have no choice but to cut Social Security. The Fiscal Times has entered into agreements with the Washington Post and other credible newspapers to provide material.

Peterson is also funding the creation of a high school curriculum which is intended to tell our children that the in the future the country will be too poor to finance Social Security. He funded a silly exercise called "America Speaks," which was supposed to convince an assembly of selected participants that we must cut Social Security after a daylong immersion in Peterson-style propaganda. (The people didn't buy it.) And now his crew is spending $20 million on an ad campaign to convince people the world will end if we don't cut Social Security.

.... the media and Congress do not respond to economic reality, they respond to money. And Peter Peterson and the Wall Street crew are not paying for an honest discussion of the country's fiscal and economic problems. They are financing a rigged debate that is intended to result to even more money flowing to Wall Street and less to those who work for a living.

Read the full article at:

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/11/09/the_wall_street_tarp_gang_wants_to_take_away_your/

[aquart]

1. I wish Peter Peterson to itch.

I mean really itch. All day long. All night long. Always with no relief.

I don't think kindly of the "man".

[Warpy]

2. And of course they're all too myopic to realize that Social Security

and unemployment checks are about the only things keeping this wheezing economy going, people with jobs trying frantically to pay down their debt before the shit hits the fan instead of buying more toys.

The shit is going to hit the fan, though. With the loss of the House, it's inevitable as Obama once again goes along to get along.

[felix_numinous]

3. And then what?

Millions of people out of the only income feeding and housing them? Do they have a plan for the CONSEQUENCES of cutting social security? It would be great if people wanting to cut human services actually had some constructive plans to compensate for it, but they have none. Just turn up the music and it will all go away. Lalalalala.

We have a right to our own money, all of it, and should not hesitate to stand up for it. Don't let any one DARE call this whining. What is on the line is not just for our generation, but for the generations to follow.

It would be great if the SS threats were all rumor, I hope that is the case--it better be.

[blindpig]

5. Shanty towns ain't just for the 3rd world anymore.

This sort of thing is inevitable with Capitalism.

[sarcasmo]

6. That is when the camps begin. Greatest country in the World my A$$.

[sarcasmo]

4. Dupe.

[Catherina]

7. All part of the global attack on workers

What fun these leaders must have at their annual meetings coordinating their asuterity plans for the working class.

The more these thieves get away with stealing, the more they want. Soon there won't be anything left to steal. These criminals will eat us alive if we let them.