NYT's (brief) LTTEs, RE: SS Pitch-not a one

[babylonsister]

favored anything the blivet had to say. Oh, the irony!

Re "Bush Cites Plan That Would Cut Social Security" (front page, April 29):
President Bush needn't stay awake nights worrying about the urgency of privatizing part of Social Security so that ordinary Americans like me will feel that they have an investment in the country by virtue of "owning" their Social Security accounts.
I, for one, feel intimately invested in my country and already "own" a great many things, including my government. The president needs reminding that it is of, by and for the people.
Despite all that I am fortunate to own, when I receive my "good as gold" Social Security check, that's when I feel pride of ownership.

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Encino, Calif., April 29, 2005
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President Bush, at his news conference on Thursday night, proposed that one investment option in what he now calls voluntary personal retirement accounts "consist entirely of Treasury bonds, which are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government."

He also asserted - as he has been asserting ad infinitum - that by the year 2041 the Social Security system will be bankrupt.

But how can that be when the Social Security system is backed by Treasury bonds, which are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government?

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Wayne, Pa., April 29, 2005
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In advocating Social Security "reform," President Bush hypocritically wraps himself in the mantle of fiscal responsibility.

Yet why should the American people fret over Social Security's anticipated shortfall years from now when the fiscal profligacy enacted in Mr. Bush's first term has forced the government to borrow so much every year?

Unless Mr. Bush and his Congressional minions substantially reduce the federal deficit and stanch the budgetary red ink they created, no amount of tinkering with Social Security will safeguard the program against the inevitable collapse that must occur when the government itself becomes insolvent.

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Aspinwall, Pa., April 29, 2005
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The proposal to cut the Social Security benefits of upper-income retirees represents the first time President Bush has dared to ask people of my affluent ilk not just to hold our noses but to sacrifice something.

Dead on arrival is my prediction.

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New York, April 29, 2005
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At his news conference on Thursday night, President Bush stressed private accounts. Don't we already have private accounts called I.R.A.'s?

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Brooklyn, April 29, 2005
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President Bush says he must address the root causes of high gas prices. This will not be difficult. The No. 1 cause is the failure of his leadership.

The president says our dependence on foreign oil has increased in the last decade. That is, in the four and a half years under his watch during which the price of our growing foreign dependence became painfully clear, this president has done nothing.

Nothing, while vehicles got larger; gas mileage plummeted; public transportation systems crumbled; and his friends in the oil business got richer.

During World War II, the national leadership told Americans that it was their patriotic duty to conserve. In the war on terror, we are given to understand that it is our patriotic duty to surrender our civil rights.

The paradox is overwhelming.

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Rochester, April 29, 2005