At Noon We Slept

Japan Quake Disaster Covers GOP Sneak Attack to Cut, Privatize Social Security, Medicare

As flames and tidal surges roiled the earthquake-devastated ruins of northeastern Japan, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans' thoughts remained focused on stealing ever more money from the American people and handing it to their trans-national plutocratic masters.

By midday Friday, McConnell announced that Republicans would not accept any agreement on a continuing resolution to fund the United States government passed the current two-week extension without cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

This is a significant milestone in Republican avarice. Having drained everything else from America's coffers, they have finally officially launched their push to plunder the nation's Social Security trust funds.  Republicans have long coveted those funds, but so far hadn't dared to touch the so-called "third rail" of politics. It is clear they no longer care.

Droning the never-ending mantra of balancing a federal budget Republicans have never cared for balancing, McConnell launched the assault on Americans' old-age safety net by drawing a line in the sand that unless they got Social Security, they would shut down the government. Unless billions more dollars were shovelled to their plutocrat masters, Republicans would force the government to cease operating.

Let us not forget that it was Republicans who wrecked the economy and bankrupted the nation.  A decade ago, Bill Clinton handed George Bush a budget surplus, which the Republicans gleefully, immediately plundered and handed to their masters through gratuitous tax giveaways. Then, they put two costly and disastrous wars on America's tab, the only discernible accomplishment of those wars being the transfer of $4 billion a month from the American taxpayer to Dick Cheney's Halliburton Corporation. Shortly thereafter, Bush announced the Ownership Society, permitting predatory financing and exotic instruments to inflate a catastrophic bubble in the real estate market, ultimately leaving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac holding the bag while Republican cronies absconded with more of the nation's wealth.  The plutocrats' off-the-books pyramid schemes crashed the world's economy, impoverishing personal savings, pension funds, and international bond markets.

Now, ostensibly to balance a budget they blew apart, Republicans take aim at stealing the nation's Social Security funds and handing the money over to their Wall Street cronies. Instead of reforming revenue by shifting the tax burden from lower- and middle-class taxpayers to their over-indulged cronies, Republicans careen full-speed down the never-ending track of pilfering ever-greater sums for their masters to devour.

Although McConnell's attack trumpet was reported by the Associated Press, none of the major corporate media reported this opening salvo in the greatest theft in history. While Republicans moved to plunder Social Security, annihilate Medicare and eliminate Medicaid, the media left the American people nearly universally uninformed of the event, allowing Republicans to steal in stealth a nation's hard-earned retirement savings and health care lifelines and leave its citizens with a handful of worthless vouchers.

Anyone who believes the GOP's Wall Street minions would be trustworthy stewards of his retirement health and well being has rocks in his head. Those GOP darlings have already lost three fortunes in the last decade, burying the world in so much debt and worthless triple-blind credit default swaps and junk portfolios that all the world's computers and all the world's CPAs can't begin to sort the mess out.  There is no fraction of an inkling of a prayer that the Wall Street money gluttons would do anything but blow the whole wad on designer togs, private mega-yachts and an endless parade of twenty-year-old "service providers."

While earnest Americans stand transfixed in horror at a catastrophe half a world away, Republicans are engineering the greatest catastrophe of Americans' lives. As Americans pour out their grief and prayers and hard-earned lucre to help those struggling through the mangled ruins of an epic natural disaster in Japan, Republicans are pouring on a blitzkrieg to mangle and ruin lives in America