May 6, 1999

*** Paying for the destruction of one society by
looting the retirement savings of another ***

Students of propaganda and the US new media
(is there a difference?) cannot have failed
to notice the steady drumbeat over the past
few years calling for the privatization of
Social Security.

The plan? Move the fund from its stable,
extremely low overhead management to the
abler, more dynamic hands of Wall Street
money managers.

In order to make this act of madness more
palatable, we've been told, incessantly,
that Social Security is running out of money
(lie #1) and the fund is badly managed (lie #2)
The management of the fund is accomplished
at a cost that is a tiny fraction of what
any of the privatization schemes promise,
and as many starry-eyed mutual fund players
should have learned by now, fund management
is not free, far from it, especially the way
Wall Street cuts the cards.

As several people pointed out to me the $6.9 billion
hike in military spending ADDED to the $ 6 billion
the commander-in-sleeze asked for to continue
bombing the people of Yugoslavia is coming
from...the US Social Security surplus. And
the US news media is silent.

I thought I'd seen everything.

Running working state managed institutions
into the ground and then crying that they
need to be "privatized" is an old game, but
never have the stakes been higher. The amount
of public money that will disappear when Social
Security is put under the "stewardship" of Wall
Street will make the S&L scandal look restrained
in comparison.

And this war, this immoral, illegal, abominable
war is being used as a smoke screen to move this
financial disaster one more step closer to
reality.

And whose money is it that created the Social Security
surplus that is now going to be used for bombs? Film maker
Rick Goldsmith "Tell the Truth and Run"
http://www.brasscheck.com/seldes fills us in:

About that Social Security surplus:  Social Security taxes comes from working
men and women and families--

The burger flipper making $6/hour pays 6.2% of his income to Social Security
to pay for the bombing.
The factory worker making $350/week pays 6.2% of her income to Social
Security to pay for the bombing.
The teacher making $30,000/year pays 6.2% of her income to Social Security to
pay for the bombing.
The tax accountant making $200,000/year pays 2% of his earned income to
Social Security to pay for the bombing.
The CEO (of that munitions factory that makes a bundle from the war) making
$1,000,000/year pays less than 1/2 of  1 percent of his salary to Social
Security to pay for the bombing.
The heir to the family fortune (of that weapons manufacturer that makes a
bundle from the war), who lives on the Wall Street-invested interest to that
fortune, pays nothing to Social Security to pay for the bombing.


I don't know about you, but I plan to be in Washington DC
June 5th. Enough is enough.