I bet that MLK Jr would have started a Civil Rights Movement for us Older People

[truedelphi]

If Martin Luther King Jr was still alive, he would be 92 years old today. Assuming he had a clear mind, and some mobility, I bet he would be starting a Civil Rights Movement for us older people.

Over the next year, we face the removal of the pension fund that the nation set up for us. Even though employers have been paying over six percent each year, while we match it, and those monies were supposed to be there for us to retire on.

Every other sit com on TV has a mother-in-law that gets made fun of. Often these women are only in their late fifties or early sixties, but they're the "buffoons" of the show.

In reality, many women and men in their late fifties and early sixties are either outright raising their grand kids or writing checks to help their children stay in their about to be foreclosed homes. (Yet we don't see any of that happening in the TV world.)

As someone who has been unemployed for over three years largely because the employers in this country have to pay the insurance premiums on their workers, and those of us over fifty five come to the work force with an automatic burden of HUGE insurance premiums, I wonder what King would have to say about this horrid situation. I am pretty sure he would be denouncing this system of outright discrimination brought about by the Health Care "Reform" Act - which guarantees the non-employment of many people who still could be contributing members of society.

King in his wisdom would be talking about all these things and more.

Anyway, what are your thoughts about this?

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. The leader you are looking is within YOU

it is time to stop fantasizing... and take the example and START that movement OURSELVES.

[truedelphi]

3. Oh, I agree.

The Powers that Be have finally made it clear I need to get off my anti-pesticide activism, and let some younger people take up that cause, while I devote myself to trying and securing my survival in terms o the economic picture.

I am sure Monsanto will be happy with this news. They won't have to plague my computer with viruses any more.

[SharonAnn]

2. Actually, workers pay all of it. The company contribution comes from wages

that were not paid to the employee. All of the contribution is from the value of the employees' labor.

It is part of the cost of hiring an employee.

[truedelphi]

4. That is a very good point.

But many young people I talk to have been convinced by the Far Right (and DLC) talking points of "Those damn Baby Boomers always get anything they DEMAND! Well, maybe that works when it came to free concerts in the park, but why should our country GIVE them the retirement THEY demand."

So I always include a reference in any discussion that there is the bottom of the paycheck section, which every worker should try and read. Currently, every worker has that 7.5 + % taken out.

Also, as an "indie" contractor for many years, I paid all of it myself, most definitely!

[H2O Man]

5. I think that

Martin's planned Poor Peoples Campaign would have addressed some of these things.

[bobbolink]

6. He would have been all about poverty, and very active in eliminating homelessness

[truedelphi]

15. It's almost like those behind his shooting understood

Exactly what he stood for.

[notesdev]

7. sounds a bit like "what comes around..."

Young people have been being discriminated against - freely and without argument from anyone else - since you qualified as one. The SS situation you describe is an all-out fraud upon them.

Intimately tying taxes, health insurance, and retirement savings (and whatever else, I've also seen things like life insurance wrapped up in this mess) to peoples' jobs was always an awful idea that creates a terribly inappropriately personal relationship between employer and employee. It cuts out important checks and balances that would keep the costs of health care from rising so rapidly, as well as checks against people making off with others' retirement savings, as our Congress has done to us.

While you can't prevent people from making stupid choices in these areas, the system we have now forces stupid choices on everyone.

[truedelphi]

23. When my husband lost his job in 2005, his life insurance stopped

At the moment of his termination.

How cool is that!

It made me wonder about the "peasant insurance" that Michael Moore documents in "Capitalism - A Love Story." The individual's life insurance stops the moment they are terminated, but does the company realize that from an actuarial standpoint, it is wise to keep on insuring the person newly terminated, under the company plans where the bennies go to the company?

After all, when a person is terminated, then the risk of heart attack, stroke and suicide all climb upward statistically speaking.all go up higher

[dkf]

8. That money you paid didn't get saved for your retirement as it went to an elderly person

Who was already retired. It's a generational tax where young workers support older retirees. That is it. Any assets in the system came from the extra workers were paying that wasn't distributed to the elderly, but the Federal Government took it and spent it.

Is it a civil right that we be provided for by the Government? I'm not sure that that is in the constitution. We have the right to pursue happiness, but that is about it.

[truedelphi]

9. Ah but according to contract law

When a program is established, based on the overriding premise that the forced "contributions" would indeed be there as a retirement program for us when we needed them, and also considering the fact that the Social Security Fund is SOLVENT, with at least 2.1 trillion bucks sitting there, I am not sure what this has to do with the Constitution.

For me, it has a lot to do with the mandatory 15% of my income I have chucked over tot he government for the past 42 years of my life. As a small business person, many times I would have been better off it I could have used the 15% for advertising, and used it for expanding my business, but instead the law seized it from me.

[eridani]

32. Bullshit. Boomers were the first generation to prepay their own retirement n/t

[dkf]

38. And who set that up? Reagan? You honestly think he was preserving funds for the middle class

Or was he trying to get the lower incomes to fund more of the federal budget?

We have been had.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

10. King realized it wasn't about race, it was about money and class.

eliminating poverty and seeing the rich keeping the poor and middle class down.

[truedelphi]

17. Yeah, he understood far too much.

It's amazing to realize, when you read about his life, how close to giving up he once came. Those who were established in their black churches, many of those pastors didn't want to be affiliated with someone so "radical."

For a little while, he came to a standstill, politically speaking. Then he got the genius idea of going to the High Schools, and enlisting the young people of the nation to do the right thing and help with the Cause of moving Civil Rights for all on an upward, unstoppable trajectory.

[truedelphi]

18. One valuable thing about Social Security recipients,

And their money:

For the most part, the money gets spent locally. To buy groceries, pay for utilities, make a trip to the acupuncture clinic, to pay for books in the local bookstore, to meet with friends at local restaurants, etc.

Our small book selling business would be much smaller if it weren't for customers on pensions and with Social Security monies to spend.

[upi402]

34. Justice; it's an economic issue

He saw reason to back labor. I think he saw that being shut out of money in a capitalist paradigm, was like being less than equal. He was beyond skin color as a single issue already - and onto economic justice.

[geek tragedy]

11. They are talking about screwing the young, not the old.

Old people are in no danger of losing a penny of your social security benefits. It's your children and grandchildren they're talking about hosing with benefit cuts and retirement age raises.

[truedelphi]

14. Hmmm,

Not true. I mean, that may be somewhat true about Social Security, although the notion of having to work an extra two to four years makes it seem difficult for many, like teachers, nurses, delivery people, who are on their feet all day.

And Obama got the Health Care "Reform" Act balanced on the heads of those on Medicare, starting in about 2014. He has set it up so that a section of the "Reform" Act whittles away some 500 billion bucks of payment monies to Medicare program, on the theory that the system can offer some "cost cutting" to the providers.

I have taken care of elderly people, and even fifteen years ago, it was tough to find a doctor in pricey metropolitan areas for a person newly enrolled on Medicare. The money just wasn't enticing enough for the doctors to take on new patients.

[defendandprotect]

24. Thank you, true delphi ....

And Obama got the Health Care "Reform" Act balanced on the heads of those on Medicare, starting in about 2014. He has set it up so that a section of the "Reform" Act whittles away some 500 billion bucks of payment monies to Medicare program, on the theory that the system can offer some "cost cutting" to the providers.

Lots to keep track of these days -- !

and didn't know that --

[truedelphi]

27. That 500 billion bucks, via Medicare slashing, is one of the ways

That the Administration can point to a reduction in the deficit as the result of the Health Care Program.

[defendandprotect]

22. Why would that make any difference in the destruction of Social Security ... only who gets screwed

is important?

Everyone -- all of society -- gets screwed when safety nets are eliminated!!

[eridani]

33. Mainly true, but current benefits will be cut via tinkering with COLA

Also, Medicare is under attack, with Congress planning to shift more costs onto old sick people.

It's true that those starting out will be FAR more in need of Social Security than my generation. Defined benefits pensions are becoming non-existent, lifetime incomes being suppressed due to starting out in a semi-permanent recession--and then when they get old enough to face age discrimination, our parasitic corporate overlords won't let them retire either.

[babsbunny]

12. I am getting up there

I have 3 Boys.........I need some hope. One Daughter-In-Law gets upset when I am around......

[truedelphi]

13. Oh, do I know the feeling...

The old saying about a son "is a son till he takes on a wife, while a daughter is a daughter all of your life..."

Sometimes I feel like hope went out the window, never to return.

And that happened for me, with regards to politics, in 1968, the year that MLK Jr. and Bobby got shot.

[babsbunny]

16. Thanks for being there!

We're in this together!

[pottersvilleusa]

19. He had already evolved from civil rights

Based on color, to human rights, based on income.
He absolutely represented all disenfranchised people, which made him very dangerous to the powers that be.

[bobbolink]

21. True, and yet.... that is not what gets replayed every year, is it?

Geeee, what could the corporate media possibly be afraid of?

[defendandprotect]

25. +1000% --

Very powerful when RFK and MLK, Jr. were both talking about the poor and disenfranchised

at the very same time -- and Vietnam -- !!

And they pretty much knocked them both out at the same time!


Great sadness still -- tremendous loss to our nation.


:cry:

[defendandprotect]

20. How deprived we are of liberal leadership ... anyone ever question that?

As Europeans say, "liberal and progressive leaders in America have an odd way of

being assassinated or otherwise eliminated."

[truedelphi]

26. Yep, no liberal progresive politican should ever fly or drive.

And if they walk somewhere, they really should look both ways a bunch of times before crossing!

[defendandprotect]

28. As I reviewed yesterday an article about FDR and the liberal pressures on him ....

the whole basis of opposition to elites was organizing/uniting together --

and they began with unemployed -- and then joining those interests with employed --

we can see how this unemployment situation, of course, intimidates the employed right now!

And, think those on welfare -- but they just kept organizing people.

Think I want to find out a lot more about that --

I'm sure you're aware of all of this -- someone here posted this link yesterday --

and interesting where "Communist Councils" begins a way down --

http://www.isreview.org/issues/71/feat-unemployed.shtml

Can't imagine that we have 22 million or so unemployed -- many long term and no one

unionizing/uniting them!

Correction to that, there is someone uniting the unemployed -- U-Cubed -- I have a link to

that somewhere and will try to catch up with what they're doing and if anyone here has been

involved with them.


:)

[truedelphi]

29. I am checking out the link you provide here.

And then eating some dinner.

These are indeed such interesting times, aren't they!

[defendandprotect]

36. Here's info on U-Cubed ... uniting unemployed --

:)


Unemployed? Join 31 million laid off Americans
That's what UCubed is here to do: Help you and 31 million other unemployed Americans organize, work ... Union of Unemployed 9000 Machinists Place Upper Marlboro ...
www.unionofunemployed.com - Cached

Removed a site by "Commonweal" which wasn't working - but they are connected also to the
Catholic Church -- on the liberal side.

Laid Off? Join 31 million unemployed Americans - UCubed ...
Dear Jobs Activist: Have you lost your job? So have 15.7 million other Americans. Another 16 million sit at home hoping their luck will turn. They, too, were idled to some ...
www.unionofunemployed.com/blog/ucubed-resources/welcome_rtb - Cached

U-Cubed, Union of Unemployed Americans urged to put anger ...
This week in a union wid
www.examiner.com/unemployment-in-san-diego/u-cubed-union... - Cached


The Unemployed Now Have Their Own Union, and It's Catching on ...
In case you haven't heard about it, the union's name is "UR Union of the Unemployed" or its nickname, "UCubed," because of its unique method of organizing.
www.alternet.org/story/145797 - Cached


Lots more on internet --

[dflprincess]

30. Probably.

Because he would know that those with the least will be the ones hurt most by the attack on Social Security.

One correction, he would have been 82, not 92. He was born in 1929.

[eridani]

31. No other developed country allows discrimination against older people in health care

No age rating, period.

[truedelphi]

37. I did not know that.

Of course, with so many other nations out there providing Universal Single Payer HC, I guess that sounds about right.

[Chisox08]

35. He would have continued his movement for all poor people

He was killed standing for the rights of workers. We need to stand for all poor people regardless of age, race or sex. This is class warfare and the majority of the American people are losing to less than 2% of the richest Americans.
Instead of separating ourselves into tiny groups that can be pitted against each other. We need to stand up with one voice and demand that our government does its job and represent the will of the people, instead of the richest few.