Ending Social Security as we know it?

[nashville_brook]

[zeemike]

1. Don't worry...you will be happy with your individual retirement account.

If you don't get fluctuated out of it by the market.
And if you are on the side of the fluctuators you will be really happy....old people with no money need to die.

[nashville_brook]

3. i'm 47 -- i lived thru the sales job of "ending of welfare as we know it"

then, Clinton's big 401K marketing blitz, and the plundering of the pension system.

i've freaking had it with these people. They are all Margaret Thatcher, now.

[DirkGently]

5. We have a problem with the creeping acceptance of insane rationales for greed.

You don't compromise with a crazy, damaging idea, or embrace it as a reasonable position, in order to get along.

We did it with welfare, when the rightwingers made up welfare queens driving Cadillacs, and it hurt people and cost us all.

We did with pensions, which undercut the entire purpose of retirement savings and replaced it with a profit center for investment firms that pulls the rug out from under retirees during every bust / bubble cycle.

We're doing it with education, pretending that unions and bad teaching, and not poor economic conditions and inept parenting, are the root of our problems.

Now we're doing it with SS, perhaps the most successful government endeavor in our history, pretending it is a government handout that's costing taxpayers money and must inevitably be eviscerated to make way for real giveaways to defense contractors and oil companies.

We've heard that privatization will fix prisons and the military, but what it really does is get GIs electrocuted in the shower and send children to literal work camps.

Every one of these carefully crafted, completely untrue rationales have one goal: Shifting costs to the public and benefits to private interests. None of it works the way it was represented to, because it was never supposed to. These are lies invented to rationalize greed, and every time a Democrat or progressive agrees to consider them, we lend weight and legitimacy to our own demise.

That's why it's a problem when we put these things "on the table." Yes, we know -- Republicans and their campaign-financing masters really, really, really want to take taxpayer money for themselves to solidify their own power, and to hurt working people and unions and the elderly. Please please please?

Our answer can't be that we'll consider it. Or go partway. Or try it out. Or trade it for a possible future breadcrumb of sanity.

We cannot afford to legitimize big lies like these by even pretending they are in good faith, or have any possible benefit. Every time we do, we're putting a noose around our collective necks and offering to kick the chair away.

For what, exactly? To seem reasonable? To make nice? What do we get out of being reasonable or making nice with people who would see us all dead for another nickel in their pockets?

NOT ACCEPTABLE is right.

[nashville_brook]

6. it's Thatcherism, pure and simple.

Chris Hayes spent a lot of time this week recognizing areas where the debate has shifted (ever so slightly) to the left on some issues like gun control.

But lets get real -- what the banks/oligarchs want is our money, and our leadership is ALL TOO HAPPILY handing it over.

NOT ACCEPTABLE.

[DirkGently]

7. She & Reagan opened the door. I think people used to be at least

a little embarrassed to suggest that the profit-motive was the purest of all human drives, or that the poor and the jobless and the elderly and the disabled were getting too sweet a deal.

Not anymore. Now it's a religion. It doesn't matter how clearly and violently these policies don't work, or how much worse things get when they're implemented. It is the unshakeable Dogma of the Church of Money Makes Right that poverty only results from laziness, that wealth is proof of competency, and that everything gets better when we empower the privileged and punish suffering.

There IS no reasonable middle road that involves appeasing the destruction of the middle and working classes and the poor, because it doesn't work, because it's not based on honest reasoning in the first place.

I do not know if the sad, few Democrats who don't get this are stupid or corrupt, or simply worn-down by the smug certainty of D.C. groupthink. But it's not okay, not even a little bit, and we are fools to not call it out for what it is every single time.

[nashville_brook]

19. ***House of Cards*** RE: the sad, few Dems who don't "get" this

it's called "power analysis" -- fence sitters and conservadems are rewarded from BOTH sides for opposing workers. they get money from biz interests, and then they get to HORSE TRADE when someone truly needs their vote.

House of Cards provides the best look inside this dynamic I've seen, using the fracking industry as the example.

[glinda]

22. Spot on statements.

[avaistheone1]

8. You are speaking the unvarnished truth.

Our party needs to be reminded again and again of these failures and violations of our democratic values and principles.

k&r

[DirkGently]

9. Surprising it's as necessary as it is, isn't it?

The sneering and poo-pooing and quitcherwhinin' even here in the supposed land of Democrats is simply bizarre.

[Fuddnik]

2. Fill your IRA with Purina stock.

[DirkGently]

10. Or shares in whoever runs Dollar Stores.

They're everywhere. Another one just popped up down the street. Crappy products that once wouldn't have been seen outside of the impulse aisle or the rare clearance sale, now sold as the go-to supplies for modern living. Because Wal-Mart employees have to shop somewhere, cheap is no longer cheap enough.

[woo me with science]

11. Yup.

Huge expansion of the market ahead as Monsanto moves us all toward 'People Chow."

[DirkGently]

21. "People Chow." Why do I think at some point that won't be a joke at all?

[DirkGently]

4. Angry Pica has more sense than any Sensible Woodchuck.

[Laelth]

23. Excellent set of posts from you in this thread. Thanks. n/t

-Laelth

[DirkGently]

25. shucks. (nt)

[woo me with science]

12. Honeybadger Wall Street Executive

don't give a shit.

[nashville_brook]

14. not as long as he has the White House at his side.

[DirkGently]

17. They're "doing God's work."

[woo me with science]

13. K&R

Thanks, I needed that.

[bvar22]

15. DURec!

This is simply the culmination of a 30 year bi-partisan assault on the Traditional Democratic Party Values
that built the largest, wealthiest, and most upwardly mobile Working Class the World had ever seen.

Gone now,
and the New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society is almost completely undone
with a Democratic President driving the last few nails in the coffin.



You will know them by their WORKS,
not by their excuses.
[font size=5 color=green]Solidarity99![/font][font size=2 color=green]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------[/center]

[nashville_brook]

18. ...an assault on working people...

i'm not even worried about our values at this point. it's the real pain people are dealing with, and will continue to deal with on into "retirement."

HA! retirement. as if.

[DarkLink]

16. Instead of being continually shocked and awed, we need to go on the offense

Congress is not only a bunch of sociopathic greedy lying assholes, they are criminals.

There must be a way we can hold them accountable when they are insider trading right in our faces.

They have been violating our Constitution, looting our treasury, giving tax cuts and war $$ to the most evil Americans...
Enough is Enough.

They have been caught!

Fed Sends Insider Info to Goldman Sachs, Barclays, JP Morgan, CITI, HSBC, UBS and Congress!
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022650050

a few days later....

'Congress Repeals Financial Disclosure Requirements For Senior U.S. Officials'
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014452676

[WillyT]

20. K & R !!!

[Laelth]

24. k&r for a righteous rant. n/t

-Laelth