Author: lapin

All of George’s efforts within the federal government to “educate” Americans about the “flat bust” Social Security system have been aided by an adjunct group outside of government.  This group of robber barons, called Compass, has lost a key member of its contingent:

Signaling more troubles ahead for President Bush’s campaign to overhaul Social Security, a group representing the nation’s biggest financial companies said Monday that it had decided not to renew its membership in a business coalition raising millions of dollars to back the effort.

The Financial Services Forum, which represents chief executives from such corporate heavyweights as American Express, Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, was a co-founder of the Coalition for the Modernization and Protection of America’s Social Security, or Compass. But it left the coalition last month after its members failed to agree on Bush’s plan to let workers divert some of their payroll tax into individual investment accounts.

A lost funding source and lost resources within the robber baron community.  This is a massive blow to Bush’s piratization effort.  Finally, some business people are sensing that f’ing with the elderly’s income is bad for business, especially if their fingerprints are on the end product.  And you know the Who-Me? Bush administration will be the first to diffuse any blame ascribed to it should the piratization plan actually come through.

crossposted at dKos

Oh so many emotions surrounding the Social Security debate!  But what has become increasingly clear to me is that George W. Bush has actually stolen the Social Security trust fund and Big Al Greenspan conviently confirmed that for me with his statements this morning:

The 2004 federal deficit was $412.5 billion, and “would have been $564 billion,” if Social Security revenue hadn’t been included in the budget, Greenspan said.
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During the 2000 presidential campaign, when the federal budget was in surplus, current President George W. Bush and then- Vice President Al Gore both endorsed the idea of “locking up” Social Security revenue to ensure the retirement fund’s surplus, which in 2004 totaled $115.9 billion, couldn’t be used for other national expenses.

Let’s see, that $564 billion dollars minus $412.5 billion dollars…that equals….$151.5 billion dollars!

What was that 2004 SS surplus?  $115.9 billion.  Gone.  Stolen.
So with if GWB actually accomplishes Social Security deformation, he will have achieved two goals:
*Destroyed the Democrats’ keynote legislation
*Covered up the greatest theft of taxpayer dollars in the history of the world!

Social Security reform is nothing more than an elaborate ruse to hide the theft of taxpayer dollars and load the equities markets with taxpayer dollars when the baby boomers start making withdrawals from those markets so they can freaking afford health insurance when they retire.  If those equities markets don’t get a fresh infusion of cash somehow, then corporations who rely on that cash to fund operations will be forced to reduce profit taking or succumb to events.  

“In addressing Social Security’s imbalances, we need to ensure that measures taken now to finance future benefit commitments represent real additions to national saving,” Greenspan told the Senate Committee on Aging today. “We need, in effect, to make the phantom `lock-boxes’ around the trust fund real.”

That “national savings” Al’s referring to, that’s tax money siphoned off from Social Security to prop up equities.  They will steal money from you and me to accomplish their goal and hide their previous crime.  And they are goddamned determined to do it.  Don’t find any security in polls that show public opinion dead set against piratization.  The corporations who have bought and sold our federal government are determined to make it happen, by hook or by crook.

We need to start selling t-shirts that say George Bush Stole the Social Security Trust Fund and All I Got Was This Lousy Federal Deficit!

cross posted at dKos

I really couldn’t come up with a better title than the headline of this insane AP article.  Apparently, Americans have this insane idea that the coverage of the Iraq War is/was biased.  And now everything’s okay; it must have been something we just imagined, because some think tank just said the coverage was not biased.

A study of news coverage of the war in Iraq fails to support a conclusion that events were portrayed either negatively or positively most of the time.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism looked at nearly 2,200 stories on television, newspapers and Web sites and found that most of them couldn’t be categorized either way.
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Twenty-five percent of the stories were negative and 20 percent were positive, according to the study, released Sunday by the Washington-based think tank.

I can’t say I agree with the conclusion, but the project director for the think tank has made some stunning conclusions.

First, this gem:

Americans are now “news grazers,” the study said.

The image of bovine compliance and mindless consumption to define many American’s use of media has never been more apt.  But thank goodness, there are many folks at places like dKos around the country.  The tide will turn.

Despite the exhaustive look, the study likely won’t change the minds of war supporters who considered the media hostile to the Bush administration, or opponents who think reporters weren’t questioning enough, said Tom Rosenstiel, the project’s director.

Say Tom, maybe you would know someone named Judith Miller, one of the war’s biggest media supporters in a place that used to have credibility?  She and known criminal Chalabi were force feeding lies to the public, giving Bushie his plausible deniability when the WMD’s never showed.  Yeah, I sure as hell think someone needed to be questioning her a lot more throroughly.  Like her goddamned editor!  See, its not really about whatwas reported, but what wasn’t reported.  Or what was reported that backed up the anti war position and then was summarily minimized and discredited by a myriad of other sources.  So I guess its not really what was reported.  Its the opinion pieces that were accepted as fact by an electorate unable to discern bullshit from reality.  And the editors.

[Project Director] Rosenstiel said most people understand the complexities of what is going on in Iraq, how continued suicide bombings can happen at the same time as a successful election.

Well jeez, can you explain it to me?  I can’t understand how forcing democracy onto a country we just invaded and pillaged could ever be considered a success.  I guess most people must have greater capacity to understand these kinds of things, huh?

Tom, I’m not convinced.

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