The Sky Is Not Falling On Social Security
Here we go again. Another election cycle, another spate of ‘sky is falling’ screaming from far right activists intent on foisting bold faced lies upon the electorate in order to get them to vote against their own self interests. Whether they use the 14th Amendment to our Constitution to try to deny birthright citizenship in the United States to the children of illegal immigrants as their test case for their ultimate transparent goal of having the ability to deny that same right to citizens who disagree with them should they regain power, to the outright misleading articles being shoved under the noses of a gullible public about the true state of Social Security, the stories all boil down to one thing. Lies.
Pointing to a recent report by the Social Security and Medicare Board of Trustees, those who try to fool the public with these bogus claims twist the report’s own words into a pretzel, leaving out little facts that point to a more solvent program rather than one in dire straights. Depending upon the fact that most people’s eyes glaze over when confronted with a bunch of numbers and the human desire to believe what we are told, the huckster brigade sets about their fear campaign in order to strike terror into the hearts of their intended victims over nothing. You, dear reader, are their intended victims.
The report shows that the Social Security program is in a better state than it was following the raiding of the trust fund by Republicans during the Bush years. It is in fact, expected to GROW for the next 14 years, and be able to pay out full benefits for the next 27 years. Of course, that news was skewed to the media by such bastions of truth as the Wall Street Journal as a dire emergency in the affairs of a program designed to make sure gramdma and grandpa don’t eat cat food. In fact, the campaign to falsify the true impact of the Trustee’s report has it’s very roots in Wall Street ala former Lehman Brothers chief executive Peter Peterson who is launching a multi-million dollar campaign to convince voters that without immediate cutbacks to Social Security benefits, our country faces imminent financial collapse.
Why would Wall Street wish to stoke the flames of the imminent collapse of Social Security? Simple. If they can buy enough far right candidates into office, they can begin to realize another of their goals of privatizing the program and getting their grubby little hands on the $2.5 trillion dollar fund. Making it seem as though the fund is already broke when it isn’t, they hope to convince you that it would be better managed by the very same people who brought you the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.
Advocated by the new spate of extremist candidates from the so called ‘Tea Party” as well as the usual scam artists such as John Boehner, the truth of the matter is that Wall Street wants your money, period. These advocates for privatization are nothing more than fronts for Wall Street and do their bidding well. As former President Franklin Roosevelt’s son, James Roosevelt said in a recent interview, ” Understanding that the public will not succumb to a frontal assault on Social Security, Tea Party supporters, Libertarians and other critics advance their radical agenda by creating a “mythology of fear,” trotting out themes of a program that is “in crisis,” “bankrupt,” “broke,” and, in the wake of the Madoff scandal, even a “Ponzi scheme.” They then position themselves not as wanting to eliminate Social Security but as wanting to “save, “strengthen,” and “protect” Social Security by privatizing it. The fact is, Social Security has been the most successful government program of the past 75 years. Today, 53 million Americans receive Social Security benefits each month. No other program in American history—has touched more lives and families and brought more financial stability to households—including those of its most ardent critics.”
And that, dear reader, sums it up in a nutshell. Convince people to vote against their own self interests in order to rob you blind once again. Which one of the Wall Street firms would you entrust with your retirement fund? With your children’s future? The same Wall Street banks that just a year ago were on the brink of collapse due to their blatant mishandling of their own affairs. The very same institutions that to this day are going about the business of multi million dollar bonuses for their top tier employees with bailout funds? How much more in bonus money do you imagine would be given to them by truly having an unlimited cash cow in the form of a never ending stream of taxpayer money rolling into the vaults of the most crooked and heartless charlatans in our nation’s history? How quickly do you suppose, that money would simply disappear and retiring Americans would find themselves with nothing? Or how many times would the public be called upon to bail out the fund we were told the far right wants to protect?
Feeling queasy yet? Good. You should be. Because all of this sky is falling yack yack from the thieves and would be thieves on the far right is just that. Chicken Littles trying to convince you that the most successful program and social safety net is bankrupting the country when it’s not. They want your money, pure and simple. They have come to try to rob you once again, and if you hand over your wallet to a thief, don’t expect him or her to give you any of your hard earned cash back. This is just another in a long line of far right, take from the poor and middle class and give it to the rich schemes. You sure don’t hear them screaming from the roof tops about the top two per cent of mega rich Americans not paying their fair share of taxes do you? The sky is not falling on Social Security. The sky is falling however, on those who seek to turn the American people from a path of moving away from the insanity of the past decade.