Saving Social Security: Both the program and the larger concept of SOCIAL security.

My friend, Ben Rich, wrote the following comment on a post that I shared about Social Security:

This is a very serious problem, not only for our generation, not only for senior citizens (now). Think about our children, now working, looking toward their own retirement. I certainly think that people should save and invest. But, real incomes are in decline making it harder to save and invest. What will our children face after 30 - 40 years of work?

You are right, Ben. We really need to come at this problem from both ends. Workers used to have pensions; after working for forty years for a company, they had expectation of a modest pension and their Social Security. In other words, part of what might have been their "pay" went into company pensions and another part of their pay went into Social Security. CEO's made ten to fifteen times what an ordinary worker made.

Then, in the late 70's-early 80's, everything changed. People who had worked their way through the company from the stock room to the board room became irrelevant because knowledge of the particular business was supplanted by knowledge of "business," and rather than spending forty years with a company, top level executives could move from running a cardboard box manufacturer to a soda company to a pharmaceutical company without any knowledge of that particular business. More importantly, those changes were made more and more often so that the "boss" had no real familiarity with the company or its personnel. Employee loyalty was no longer valued, and the perks that helped to engender that loyalty, like pensions, health benefits, etc. were rapidly eliminated.

As a result, companies immediately had much more profit and fewer responsibilities to the employee. Rather than sharing this largesse with the workers, that increased wealth went to the management and stockholders. Then, under Reagan, corporate mergers, creative bookkeeping, and contract breaking under Chapter 11 bankruptcies, tax havens, drastically lower tax rates for corporations and the wealthy allowed even further erosion of income for the middle class and the working poor.

The so-called "market" has become a rigged game that has nothing to do with Adam Smith's conception of capitalism. Those at the top agree to give themselves an ever larger share of the pie while reducing everyone else's share, and they pay politicians to grease the wheels for this unjustified transfer of wealth.

The cap on Social Security at barely over $100,000 dollars has the average worker pay a significant percentage of their income into the pool while the truly wealthy pay a pittance in comparison. Furthermore, those who make much of their income from investments pay a much lower tax rate than those who do the work of this country. At present, companies are rewarded for outsourcing jobs or downsizing, when "downsizing" merely means those who are left do much more work for the same or less pay.

We need a real movement to regulate financial markets, make boards and CEO's responsible to both stockholders and employees, get unlimited anonymous money out of politics, make corporations and industries responsible for the actual damage that they do to the environment and prevent that damage from continuing, and drastically strengthen the social safety net for children, workers, retirees, the infirm, and the downtrodden. We need to stabilize the banking and financial industries so that fraud and foul play cannot jeopardize a lifetime of savings in one quick downturn. We need to control medical costs so that one illness cannot destroy a lifetime of savings. We need to have a fair wage so that people can even begin to accrue a lifetime of savings.

The irony and the tragedy of our current state of affairs is that we were on a hundred year run toward realizing these progressive ideals when we were train-wrecked thirty years ago by uncontrolled greed. We can set the train back on the tracks, but first, we have to realize that it has actually jumped the tracks. The current powers that be are doing their utmost to convince those of us on the train that despite all these bumps and crashes we are still on the tracks. A vast majority, of course, realize that the profiteers and exploiters are wrong, but we are not yet convinced that it is within our means to right ourselves. It is within our means to set things back on the correct, progressive path, but the longer we wait, the harder it will be.

Don't Let the Cons Con You into Decimating Social Security

We need to stand strong and united. The assaults on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are real, and they come from both sides of the aisle. The excuse for attacking these essential, social safety net programs is the "dreadful deficit," which, of course, was created from a budget SURPLUS and was the direct result of many errant policies.

Though some Democratic Representatives have endorsed a few of these policies, most are the direct result of Republican ideology and policy: unjustified military actions and unnecessary military spending (often on programs and equipment that the military has explicitly said that it does not want or need); huge tax decreases for the wealthiest corporations and individuals; unnecessary and unwarranted subsidies for some of the wealthiest industries; egregiously unfair tax loopholes—available only to the wealthy—that allow many of the wealthiest corporations and individuals to avoid warranted taxes; totally misguided and faulty deregulation of the financial sector that lead to several drastic economic downturns, especially the most recent "great recession"; the "no-strings-attached" economic bailout of those most directly responsible for the economic collapse which has left the worst actors in better shape than before their fraud-induced collapse while leaving most of the country still devastated by economic loss; a completely unrealistic cap on Social Security contributions; six years of political sabotage and stalemate from the minority party outspokenly intent on destroying any chance of significant job recovery or health care reform merely to gain political advantage; and very significantly, a cynical media assault on Social Security, Medicare, and government in general, designed to mislead several generations into believing that there will be nothing for them in the future, that they should abandon all interest in wider society, that privatizing everything gives them a better chance, and that they should care about nothing but their own interests, and, of course, by example, that lying, cheating, and stealing are simply necessary methods for success and that the rules limiting these methods should be loosened or eliminated.

The chained CPI, a method of conscientiously miscalculating downward the needs of retirees so as to significantly reduce their benefits in the future, is actually a drastic, negative change. Before Social Security is touched, before Medicare and Medicaid and a hundred other programs that have already been diminished by political blackmail, extortion, brinkmanship, and disingenuous compromise, we need to rebuild the middle class and our social safety programs by reversing all of the failed policies mentioned above. Only after we have raised the income threshold on Social Security; only after we have reduced our outrageous and unnecessary military spending, including bringing the "Big Brother" surveillance regime under control; only after re-regulating and better regulating the financial sector; only after significantly reducing tax loopholes and subsidies for the wealthiest should we even begin to consider cuts to social programs.

Should we attempt to eliminate fraud in social programs and tax policies? Absolutely. That naturally requires more regulation and regulators, not less as the Republican congress and media echo chamber have advocated and accomplished for many years. Furthermore, we need to bring real criminal charges against those who actually committed or condoned fraud and worse, offering jail time, not just pittance penalties—people have been out of work for years now as a result of this malfeasance, and these criminal corporations are asked to pay only a few days income in fines? There is real injustice here, but many of those in Congress have fought tooth and claw to prevent their financial backers from being held accountable, choosing instead to wreak havoc on women, children, the elderly, workers, immigrants, and the poor. If we all demand that they make other more fair and equitable changes before tampering with the few programs actually designed to benefit the common man, maybe they will listen.

I encourage you to sign the petition from Bernie Sanders whether it comes from Sen. Bernie Sanders, Alliance for Retired Americans, Campaign for America's Future, Campaign for Community Change, DailyKos, Democracy For America, The Other 98%, Progressives United, Social Security Works, USAction or any other organization or politician endorsing the protection of Social Security and Medicare.

"The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!"
Tim McMullen

It's Time to Take It Back (Rush Did...)

Did you happen to notice that Rush Limbaugh has apologized to the Georgetown student that he slandered? It is a typical type of political media apology—I'm sorry that you were offended by what I said...I make jokes...I might have used an ill-chosen word or two, but what I was saying is still true—but the truth is that Limbaugh almost never apologizes for any of the crap he spews, so those of you who pushed those advertisers' buttons really got through. If even a few of them have dropped him permanently, it will be a positive move, but if we call him out every time he makes a racist or sexist remark and let his sponsors know that we will not support them as long as they are supporting him, he just may eventually go the way of Glenn Beck and lose his national audience. 

There is all this talk about "entitlements" and how they are destroying this country and must be cut back or eliminated. I worked for forty years as a teacher, so I don't even get social security, yet many of these obscenely highly-paid pundits and pension-for-life politicians characterize the pension that I did earn as nothing less than stealing from honest, hard-working taxpayers (I, of course, have been an honest, hard-working taxpayer since I was sixteen), but now I am merely a leech. There you have it, from "teach" to "leech" as a sign of these bizarre times. 

I say we start with Scott Walker in Wisconsin, where this latest war on the 99% began and get him out, and then start recalling the hell out of those Governors and legislators across the country who are waging an immoral and unscrupulous war against workers, women, immigrants, homeowners, children, the elderly, the poor, veterans, ad infinitum.

The thing that the far right wing figured out (I am going to stop calling them Republicans—I have had many friends who considered themselves to be Republicans who were far left of many "centrist" Democrats in this looking-glass world of present day politics, but this current crop of psychotic sycophants and cynical, polemical demagogues do not deserve to be graced with the name Republican)...Anyway, the thing that the far right wing figured out was that in this day of instant and world-wide media, NO politics are LOCAL. That's why they have been infiltrating and running campaigns for school boards, sheriffs, judges, state legislators, governors, and local referendums and initiatives, as well as pumping millions into national campaigns while simultaneously pushing for deregulation of the media, of the environment, of finance. Deregulation really just means, "Now you can't stop us at all because we just conned you into wiping out the law that criminalized our acts of pillage and mayhem." 

My senators and rep from California or Maine or Hawaii may agree with me 100%, but their votes can be neutralized by a 40% minority in the Senate. Judges decisions don't just affect the defendant, they can have ramifications across the country. When a Scott Walker introduces a bill to destroy the rights of workers, that same bill shows up in fifteen different state legislatures the same week. When Virginia attempts to pass a law requiring women to be physically or sexually assaulted by a doctor or technician for no other purpose than to abuse and terrify her (their law did not require her to actually look at the ultrasound) before she can have an abortion, variations of that law are simultaneously being introduced in other state houses around the country.

These assaults on workers' rights or women's rights don't originate in Wisconsin or Ohio or Virginia. They are devised by far-right think tanks—the same ones that thought up and published the Patriot Act ten years before 9/11—then disseminated through ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) and the National Chamber of Commerce, then hammered into the unsuspecting and undiscerning ears and minds of the populace 24/7 over the airwaves of Fox and Clear Channel, then "picked up" by the rest of the media, and finally perpetuated through endless bloggers and trolls on the internet.

We have to get smart. We need to be aware of and support campaigns across the country when a rational candidate has a chance to eliminate an irrational one. We need to have civilized, reasoned, informed conversations at work, at the store, in our schools, in our homes. We can't let racism or sexism or distortions or lies go unchallenged, not in jokes, not in public forums, not on the internet, not in idle chat among friends. People can be persuaded, but they have to hear it reiterated again and again from people they respect in order to drown out the conniving cacophony calculated to create complacency and hopelessness which, in turn, can convince people to either not vote because "voting is useless" or to vote against their own best interests through deceptive and manipulative propaganda. 

So let's reframe the discussion. End the entitlements (right there, we can get rid of corporate welfare and tons of business tax loopholes), all we want are OUR OWN EARNED BENEFITS, which include general health, welfare, safety, and security for all. I will offer more on the necessity of taking back the language at a later date. But for now, as Woody Guthrie and Studs Terkel used to say, "Take it easy...but take it!"

And as I always say, "The Greatest Threat to Democracy is Hypocrisy! Seek Truth! Speak Truth!" 
Tim McMullen

My song, "The Governed's Mental Getcha'," written in 1980, which addresses a number of the issues that have reared their ugly heads in recent months (okay, they never went away).