Pickin' on Folks Your Own Size

Unless your reasoning function has been temporarily disabled, it's hard to imagine you swallowing the PR swill the white house and usual sycophants - paid and free - are serving up on the still largely theoretical program of the President to "privatize" (i.e., disembowel) Social Security. Few details have been voluntarily released of course. What we know (the bits properly scrubbed for the light of day) seems to have been basically uncovered by way of the one-in-a-blue question session (presumably the ones where they get sloppy in hand-picking the attendees). Despite typically sleazy rovian slicing, dicing, and nuanced wordgames it's still such an obviously bad idea that even republican officeholders would rather be caught linking to one of Gannon's websites or joining Delay on a junket than publicly endorse this stinky program. And mercifully a generous majority of the public isn't buying it either.

This game would be at least a little more on the level if the pro-privatization bullies had any personal stake in a conventional retirement program. If butch or chains-and-whips in their dotage were in any way going to be impacted by a reduction in SS benefits this would be a different contest. It seems to me that the public discussion certainly ought to take into consideration that we are not all equal players in this. The whole process is violently canted against democratic principles to begin with. I for one do not have the option of funneling the odd nine-digit non-competed contract to my defense contractor friends. I can't with stroke of pen find a few mill for the most elite of elites, the ones actually benefiting from tax breaks. Those of course are my (and your) tax dollars being siphoned off and sent to the equivalent of private bank accounts to be drawn on after retirement. Or impeachment.

Moral and ethical scruples have been so obviously totally absent in almost every move made by this administration that a few casual temporary "deposits" of taxpayer gleanings most certainly are part of the landscape. Payoffs are absolutely out there in the future. Bet on it. In the "reality-based" world where most of us live, that is called crime. But then these guys have an amazing string of "unsolved" crimes under their belts; why worry now?

In the meantime, the ever-excellent OpEdNews site has another angle on the Big Inequity that has replaced the form of government formerly known as democracy:

"Corporate Welfare: How come Lockheed gets food stamps and we don't?"
By Jane Stillwater

How come General Electric gets a place in The Projects and we have to sleep on the streets? How come Monsanto gets government handouts? Where's MY government cheese?

Walmart gets Medicaid. Lockheed-Martin gets food stamps. Everyone knows that Halliburton is on the dole. And what's up with those welfare queens on Wall Street? How come we have to work and pay taxes and they don't? My income is called "income" and I pay through the nose but their income is called "capital gains" and doesn't count. How come they get a free ride?

The pharmaceutical industry gets Medicaid too. According to NewsTarget, "79 drug companies are now being accused of defrauding state Medicaid programs by artificially inflating the prices of drugs." But are WE eligible for Medicaid? Taxpayers need not apply.

It is against HUD regulations to allow people with drug abuse records and bad credit to receive housing subsidies but HUD makes an exception for George Bush. With his seven trillion dollar deficit and history of drug use, why does HE get to live in subsidized housing? If I were to go that far into debt, would the government start to pay me too?

Bush's new tax law has been nicknamed "welfare for the rich" for a very good reason. According to Paul Krugman of the New York Times, "More than half of the benefits from this backdoor tax cut would go to people with incomes of more than a million dollars...." Wow!

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