[Vision2020] Why Social Security, and Why Now?

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (March 9, 2005) The Skew (www.theskew.com) 

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Why Social Security, and Why Now?

People of conscience and intelligence have been depressed lately. We have
watched crazy things happen in America, things that before 9/11 would have
been unthinkable. Americans torturing prisoners? Unthinkable. Americans held
in custody by other Americans without trial or charge for years?
Unthinkable. The saddest aspect of this has been how easily it happened and
how oblivious most of us seem to be about it. The liars and propagandists of
the right sometimes seem invincible and unaccountable.

However, the Bush administration may have bitten off more than it can chew
with Social Security reform. As the right-wing spin machine revs into
overdrive to sell the dismantling of the popular and successful anti-poverty
program, it does not appear that the American public is convinced.

A brief aside: dismantling is the right word, make no mistake about it. What
the president is characterizing as "personal accounts" is nothing more than
a first step in the total divestiture of the government in SS. Republicans,
being rich themselves, and therefore having no need of financial assistance
from their government, would like to get rid of every program that helps
those less well off. Personal accounts would also place a lot of money in
the pockets of Wall Street brokers, who would collect the fees on investor
transactions, regardless of whether those transactions help or hurt the
individual.

So why now? I believe it is because the Republicans are worried that their
time in power might be short. Despite their claims that America is "going
red," most Americans are fairly liberal and open-minded. In the last 100
years there are many milestones America saw of increasing openness, equity
and fairness - women's suffrage, the civil rights act of 1964, social
security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Americans with Disabilities Act, Roe vs.
Wade, on and on and on. Against this whole collection of changes which have
increased human happiness stands the party of the rich, which has only truly
been in power for 4 or so years, a short time by comparison. They can't be
sure that at some point America will wake up and recognize them for what
they are, which is heartless businessmen, and toss them out on their asses.
So they have to move fast. People of intelligence and conscience must keep
talking about this issue.

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Take care, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"What is objectionable, what is dangerous, about extremists is not that they
are extreme, but that they are intolerant. The evil is not what they say
about their cause, but what they say about their opponents."

-- Robert F. Kennedy