While GOP Rails Against Social Security, Corporate Giants Are Real Ponzi Scams

GOP Presidential rabble-rouser Gov. Rick Perry and other Republicans of his ilk ranting and raving that Social Security was a Ponzi scheme ought to look up what a Ponzi scheme really was.

For the benefit of those who hadn't had the time to cruise Wikipedia or watch a couple of TV crime dramas, a Ponzi scheme was a scam wherein a con artist got a bunch of marks to give him all their money by promising a big return on their investments, and got everyone to believe him by paying off some of the earlier marks with money collected from later marks. Then, when the scammer figured he'd gotten a big enough haul, he dashed with the cash.

Social Security, despite Perry's and the GOP's ravings, was solvent for another twenty years, and with minor tweaks to payroll taxes, namely by having Perry and his ultra-rich cronies kick in their fair share of scoots, would remain solvent until genetically engineered pigs rocketed through space, at which point Social Security would be the least of eveyone's problems.

For real Ponzi schemes, one need look no further than the trans-national plutocracies greasing the political wheels. For real scams and ripoffs, one need look no further than the trickle-down, supply-side voodoo economics corporate scammers that call the shots.

Perry and Republicans of his ilk want to plunder the Social Security trust funds and hand all the money to their Wall Street cronies. After all, the big money tycoons were running a bit short having blown all the money everyone pumped into 401Ks and mutual funds. The S&P 500 closed on September 14 at 1172.87, a whole eighty-some-odd points above where it closed on September 14, 2001, when it closed at 1092.34. That was a whole lot of nothing for however much folks pumped into the S&P 500 over those ten years. Well, a whole lot of nothing minus the appropriate fees and carrying charges bankers, brokers, hedge fund managers and assorted wannabes and hangers-on deducted for booze, hookers and that fleet of Cessna Citation Xs.

Which was why Perry and his GOP brethren figured doing away with Social Security and handing all of eveyone's money to those same big money tycoons was just the trick to secure everyone's retirement, or at least the big money tycoons' retirements, less the appropriate fees and carry charges for booze, hookers, and another fleet of Cessna Citation Xs. Or XIIs. Or whatever Roman numeral Cessna would be up to by that time.

Because who wouldn't want to hand all her money to the likes of Bank of America, one of the nation's Big Four banks? Or whatever number Big banks America was down to nowadays.

Not that Bank of America was really Bank of America, the venerable San Francisco fiduciary institution founded by Amadeo P. Giannini that, thanks to a wise investment in fireproof vaults, was up and running behind an plank set on a couple of barrels while the ruins were still smoldering from the 1906 earthquake and fire.

Because Bank of America was really NationsBank, the ignoble North Carolina pyramid scam that bought out and leveraged and merged with about a gazillion other banks, including Bank of America, which by then was also leveraging and buying out about a gazillion banks itself, until they leveraged their cakeholes into buying out Countrywide and Merrill Lynch and collapsed the whole teetering pile of cards.

Now, that was a Ponzi scheme if ever there was one.

Now, B of A, or whatever the seething den of Enronian inequity was calling itself nowadays, announced Monday it was going to have to add another 30,000 poor slobs to the legions of unemployed queuing for the dole, as they might say in Jolly Old. Now B of A, or whatever the heaving pile of private-sector plutocracy-in-action was calling itself nowadays, was going to have to combine even more operations and close even more offices to keep the champagne flowing and the caviar doing whatever caviar did in the boardrooms and corporate suites and aboard all those Cessna Citation Roman numeral whatevers.

Not that any of that was going to help B of A, as when a Ponzi scheme collapsed, it really, really collapsed.

"I think this is rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, actually," economist Simon Johnson, late of the International Monetary Fund and current MIT nabob told the PBS Newshour. "Our biggest bank has got itself into terrible trouble. Remember, they bought Countrywide at a crazy price. They bought Merrill Lynch at an even more crazy price. They need to unravel this mega-bank. It's too big to manage at this point."

Countrywide, for the benefit of those who'd been neglecting to fill in their scorecards, was the banking scam that went from lame to fame by pumping piles of cash into the housing bubble, then crashed all the way to left-hand-to-the-forehead loser when the boom went bust in 2008.

Now, thanks to B of A's braniacs from the Charlie Ponzi School of Business and Elocution, B of A, Countrywide notwithstanding, owned more bad paper than all the settling tanks in all the sewage treatment plants in America.

"The big uncertainty for Bank of America is how much...are all their other mortgage problems going to cost them?" said Bert Ely, monetary policy wonk, as though the bad paper itself wasn't a big enough problem. "They're facing lawsuits in the billions, maybe several tens of billions of dollars."

When asked whether B of A was down for the count or was going to make it to a neutral corner, Ely made a throat-clearing sort of noise and said, "It's going to be a long hard slog for them to do so."

That would be a "no."

And, as far as corporate America's money mavens went, B of A was the First Team. Top Dog. Cock of the walk. If-you-could-make-it-there-you-make-it-everywhere, "A" foam-finger Number One.

Exactly the sort of folks Rick Perry figured should be in charge of everyone's money, instead of bumbling, stumbling old Ponzi-scamming Uncle Sam, who everyone and his or her brother, sister, and third cousins twice-removed and put back three times was shovelling mountains of cash at because all the equity markets everywhere in the world were making like the Cyclone at Coney Island.

Ponzi scheme indeed. 

Obama Betrayal Train Smashes Environment En Route To Axing Medicare, Social Security

The rate and breadth of President Barack Obama's betrayals accelerated to breakneck speed in an apparent bid to utterly destroy the Democratic brand and ingratiate himself with Republicans and plutocrats. Neither the GOP nor the ultra-wealthy were impressed, but Obama did succeed in discouraging Democratic supporters from coming out in 2012.

The Obama Administration barrelled ahead with plans to rubber-stamp the Keystone XL pipeline slated to transport raw Canadian tar sands oil to the Gulf of Mexico, so the toxic sludge could destroy the Ogallala Aquifer en route to turning colossal profits for oil moguls shipping the refined end product to overseas markets. Oil moguls cheered.

Then, the Obama Administration Friday declared it was suspending implementation of new ozone regulations, as stunned environmental activists reeled dumbfounded in slack-jawed astonishment. Oil moguls and coal magnates cheered.

Those betrayals, atop Obama's heinous laundry list of previous capitulations, paled in comparison to the Betrayer-in-Chief's schemes to gut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Obama planned to announce his greatest perfidy in the weeks following his grandstand Aug. 8 jobs speech.

Despite bipartisan opposition by activists, movie stars, Nebraska farmers and even a Republican governor, the Obama Administration moved relentlessly toward approving the Keystone XL pipeline scam. Obama and the oil moguls conspired to obliterate Canada's priceless Boreal forests, gouge uber-polluting tar sands from the lunarized landscape, and pipe toxic "dilbit" across six states to Port Arthur, TX refineries, where it can be processed for overseas markets.

More than 1,000 demonstrators protesting the pipeline boondoggle have been arrested as they gathered across the street from the White House over the past two weeks. Those arrested included actress Darryl Hannah, Maryland state senator Paul Pinsky, and the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, James Hanson, the Riverdale Park-University Park Patch reported.

Obama followed up coddling oil moguls and busting green activists with more coddling of oil moguls and coal magnates, while shunning the green activists who had naively helped put him into the Oval Office. Environmentalists rocked by Keystone XL reeled when Obama Friday ditched new air pollution rules designed to cut smog-forming pollutants.

Instead of cutting atmospheric ozone from 75 parts per billion to 60 parts per billion, Obama deemed what was good enough for George W. Bush, who had set the old standard, was good enough for America.

In his Republicanesque pro-pollution statement, Obama wheezed, "I have continued to underscore the importance of reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover."

Obama's recovering economy added exactly no jobs in August, tumbling equity markets around the globe.

If Obama wanted to create certainty for employers, he could simply announce any money corporations weren't spending to hire Americans and to invest in American plants and equipment would be taxed to within an inch of its bottom line. Then, his administration could launch an aggressive stimulus plan to rebuild the nation's $2 trillion worth of crumbling infrastructure, create a high-speed rail network, link the nation with broadband, and support advanced research to develop future technologies.

Instead, Obama's free pass to polluters only promised to create $100 billion worth of additional respiratory ailments annually, while handing polluters $90 billion worth of pollution abatement passes, according to The Hill.

But, all of this miserable perfidy was nothing compared to Obama's defacto plan to destroy the Democratic Party and hand Republicans in 2012 unfettered control of the White House and the Senate on top of the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court.

No sooner than Obama had coddled his air polluters, the White House Friday announced the Republicanizer-in-Chief would follow up his jobs speech with the launch of his Medicare-busting, Medicaid-gutting, Social Security-slashing deficit-reduction ploy, reported the Politico.

Obama's scheme to gut the nation's safety net entitlements promised to re-introduce means testing for Social Security, reducing benefits for the wealthy, so lobbyists and lawyers for the rich could get started on labelling FDR's landmark old-age pension plan as an unsupportable giveaway to worthless, shiftless poor who hadn't had the foresight to be born into the monied elite; to re-introduce incrementally rising age eligibility for Medicare, so the rich could taunt and gloat while millions went broke and died scrambling to bridge the gap between employer-sponsored health coverage and the entitlement to which they were rightfully entitled; and to refloat reducing Medicaid to block grants so industrial medical combines could abscond with the funds while abandoning millions to misery, pain and death.

Obama had been horny to plunder the Big Three entitlements during the recent Republican hostage-taking of the nation's debt ceiling, but Republicans balked at his $4 trillion deficit reduction vision. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) ostensibly backed away from Obama's grand vision because a few piddling tax tweaks were unacceptable to Republican sensibilities. In hindsight, Boehner, a seasoned Capitol Hill insider, might simply have had second thoughts about strapping himself to the Third Rail of Politics and waiting for the Express while a couple trillion volts fried his mortal carcass.

Without having to haul such timid baggage as Boehner with him, Obama could plunge ahead unfettered, and claim his biggest scalp, the Democratic Party itself.

Democrats commanded the high ground by doggedly defending Medicare against Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) unconscionable plan to hand all its money to insurance industry cronies while pawning off future seniors with worthless coupons. Democrats commanded the high ground by doggedly defending Social Security against reprehensible GOP plans to hand all its money to Wall Street cronies while abandoning future seniors to poverty and destitution. Democrats commanded the high ground by doggedly defending Medicaid against incessant Republican schemes to hand all its money to medical industry cronies while forsaking the poor and disabled.

Democrats commanded high ground no Republican could assail. Democrats commanded high ground vulnerable only to unprecedented perfidy and treachery: the perfidy and treachery of a single mortal conglomeration of tissue and blood and bile who had, for the sake of shameless self-aggrandizement, betrayed the grandmother who had loved and nurtured him in her small apartment; betrayed the prominent pastor who had taken him in and raised him high in the community from which he launched his political ambitions; betrayed the seasoned political veteran who had mentored and guided the rising junior Senator from Illinois; betrayed countless aides, advisers, and appointees who had daily toiled to serve a young President and a great nation; betrayed the voters, supporters, organizers, and pavement-pounding canvassers who had risen to heed the call for hope and change.

Betrayed the very soil, and water, and air of a nation and a planet.

The perfidy and treachery of Barack Obama, who, with a single speech in late September 2011, would surrender the high ground Democrats defended for seventy years, and open wide the gates for yet another Republican populist from Texas.

GOP Rallies Behind Perry In Push to Eliminate Social Security, Medicare

Republicans eager to eliminate Social Security and Medicare have feverishly rallied behind Texas' extremist cowboy Governor Rick Perry, a new Gallup poll revealed.

A week since tossing his ten-gallon hat into the GOP presidential ring, Perry has opened up a double-digit lead over his nearest rival, milquetoast moderate-by-Republican-standards Mitt Romney. The anti-government, pro-tycoon populist Perry led Romney 29% to 17% among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters mulling their choices for a 2012 standard bearer.

On the campaign trail, Perry, who championed abolishing Social Security in his recent book, Fed Up!, reiterated his vehement opposition to FDR's landmark safety net.

"Have you read my book, Fed Up?" Perry strutted before enraptured Waterloo, IA sycophants Aug. 14 in a video clip posted on the Daily Kos. "Get a copy of it and read it!" he said, in full Palin-snake-oil-selling mode.

Perry warmed up to his favorite pitch, crowing, "kids who are coming along, they know for a fact there's not going to be a Social Security and Medicare program!"

"We have to talk about how are we going to transfer over," Perry stumbled a moment, presumably catching himself before he said 'transfer over all the money in the Social Security Trust Funds to my fat cat K Street cronies who'll kick me back a big finder's fee,' and finished by just saying, "How are we going to make the transformation" to a medieval plutocracy where the elderly were abandoned to destitution and misery.

Conscious of rousing a public backlash, Perry spokesperson Ray Sullivan attempted to walk back his candidate's rabid anti-Social Security rant, and said Fed Up! "was a look back, not a look forward," written "as a review and critique of 50 years of federal excess, not in any way as a 2012 campaign blueprint or manifesto."

Republicans, however, appeared jubilant they had a champion who coveted dismantling Social Security.

The surging Perry had rapidly outstripped the GOP field. Aside from trouncing Romney 29% to 17%, he was ahead of Reps. Ron Paul's (R-TX) 13% and Michele Bachmann's (R-MN) 10%. With Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani in the mix, Perry still snagged 25%, with the Palin drawing 11% and Giuliani garnering 9%.

Gallup also found that Perry was in a dead heat with President Barack Obama, 47% to 47%. Obama, whose popularity has been plummeting, trailed Romney 46% to 48%, and led Bachmann by just four points.

Despite his handlers' best efforts, the indomitable Perry remained scathing in his denunciation of Social Security.

"Social Security is something we have been forced to accept for 70 years now," Perry wrote. He told the Daily Beast, "Whether it's Social Security, whether it's Medicaid, whether it's Medicare, you've got $115 trillion worth of unfunded liability in those three. They're bankrupt. They're a Ponzi scheme."

Never mind that all three programs were actually solvent, and would remain so ad infinitum if the wealthy would pay their fair share of taxes instead of fattening themselves on the unconscionable tax breaks and subsidies lavished on them by toadying GOP politicos.

With Perry as their favorite, Republicans were plunging ahead with their plans to eliminate Social Security and hand all its funds to Wall Street moguls eager to toss other people's money onto the roulette wheel of international equity markets while collecting their rake regardless of which slot the ball fell into. Despite furious public outrage, the GOP was doubling down on their plans to dismantle Medicare, hand all its money to insurance industry cronies, and pawn off future seniors with worthless discount coupons the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office revealed wouldn't cover a third of seniors' health care costs.

Republicans counted on repeating the "Social Security is broke" and "Medicare is broke" lies until gullible rubes coast to coast believed them. Republicans knew if square-jawed, photogenic white populists pounded their fists and lied loud enough and long enough, the rubes invariably believed them. Texas was lousy with evangelical revival meetings filled to the rafters.

Perry's even led his share of them.

In fact, Medicare was the most efficient deliverer of health care services in America, with administrative costs of 3%, compared to 5%-10% for large group insurance plans, 25%-27% for small group plans, and a whopping 40% for the kind of individual plans Republicans wanted future seniors to shell out for.

In fact, Social Security was solvent for another twenty years, and, with minor tweaks to payroll taxes, would remain so until starship troopers found a better solution at the other end of the galaxy.

Republicans, however, were greedy for the 10%, or 27%, or 40% "administrative fees" their insurance industry cronies could gorge themselves on. Republicans and their billionaire cronies were too greedy to pay the minuscule payroll tax tweaks that would fund Social Security until genetically-modified, bionically enhanced pigs rocketed across infinity and beyond.

Perry told the Daily Beast he believed Social Security and Medicare were unconstitutional.

"I don't think our Founding Fathers when they were putting the term 'general welfare' in there were thinking about a federally operated program of pensions nor a federally operated program of health care," Perry pontificated. "What they clearly said was that those were issues that the states need to address," although where Perry got that notion was, to say the least, unclear.

The interviewer asked Perry, "What did the Founding Fathers mean by 'general welfare?'"

Perry muttered, "I don't know if I'm going to sit here and parse down to what the Founding Fathers thought general welfare meant." Further questions were met by silence.

At a time when half of America's senior citizens couldn't support themselves and millions suffered poverty and destitution, a real American President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, told Congress, "If, as our Constitution tells us, our Federal Government was established...'to promote the general welfare,' it is our plain duty to provide for that security upon which welfare depends." Fifteen months later, on August 14, 1935, FDR signed the Social Security Act into law.

Nothing could be clearer than that.

As Debt Ceiling Struggles Peak, Obama Says, "Ich Bin Ein Republican"

Then, Benedict Arnold turned to Barack Obama and asked, "So, what are you in for?"

It's crunch time in the protracted, unconscionable hostage-taking of the normally pro forma raising of the nation's debt ceiling. Republicans have been using the federal government's need to raise its credit limit as an excuse to demand trillions of dollars in service cuts and tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy, and President Barack Obama has jumped on their bandwagon.

The federal government must raise its $14.3 trillion debt ceiling to continue funding operations, sending out Social Security and Medicare checks, and paying existing obligations. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has set an Aug. 2 deadline, after which the government will not be able to meet its obligations or roll over debt, sending the nation into default and global bond markets and financial systems into catastrophic cascade failure.

Meanwhile, slashing government spending, entitlements and eliminating stimulus will plunge the nation into a second recession.

During his address to the nation last weekend, Obama alarmingly embraced Republican boilerplate rhetoric on taxes, budgets and growth, saying, "Government has to start living within its means, just like families do. We have to cut the spending we can't afford so we can put the economy on sounder footing, and give our businesses the confidence they need to grow and create jobs."

Then, he turned around and horrified Democrats by blithely announcing he would slash $500 billion from Medicare, $250-$350 billion from non-health entitlements, and blend the myriad formulas used to figure federal and state Medicaid contributions to slash $100 billion from that program.

Princeton Economist and Nobel Prize Laureate Paul Krugman was appalled, and wrote:

"No, government shouldn't budget the way families do; on the contrary, trying to balance the budget in times of economic distress is a recipe for deepening the slump. Spending cuts right now wouldn't "put the economy on sounder footing." They would reduce growth and raise unemployment. And last but not least, businesses aren't holding back because they lack confidence in government policies; they're holding back because they don't have enough customers - a problem that would be made worse, not better, by short-term spending cuts."

Possibly, the extended hostage situation has given Obama a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome. Or not. Obama has long enjoyed the support of Wall Street and corporate America, and now openly cleaves to the Republican agenda: more tax cuts for the wealthy, paid for by more service cuts on everyone else.

Obama wants to make the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, slash corporate tax rates, and appears determined to slash core entitlements to pay for those tax expenditures.

If, instead of Neville Chamberlain, the British had sent Barack Obama to parlay with Hitler, instead of the "Peace for our time" speech, you would have gotten the "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.

Chamberlain's heinous weakness was roundly and rightly denounced as the worst kind of appeasement. But Chamberlain never strapped on a swastika armband and gave the Luftwaffe clearance to land at Croydon.

Democrats and Independents were not amused.

"I have talked to some of my colleagues," said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT),"including some you might not expect, who say if (the Administration) bring to the Senate a piece of crap that comes down heavy on working families and children and the elderly and they expect me to matter-of-factly vote for it, they'll have another thing coming."

Sanders vowed the other thing would be a filibuster.

"I do worry the White House is misreading the Senate," said namesake Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI). "There has not been enough communication to alleviate that misreading."

Obama's scheme to cook Social Security's cost-of-living adjustments would slash benefits by an average of $1,000 per year over twenty years, Sanders warned, and pointed out that candidate Obama had promised not to touch the COLA formula.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) met privately with Obama and Vice President Joe Biden Friday morning, then addressed her caucus. Pelosi had been frozen out of budget talks during this Spring's government-shutdown hostage drama, and wasn't about to let that happen again.

"The (Democrats) cheered Pelosi when she said she was not going to back up," said Congressional Black Caucus leader Emmanuel Cleaver (D-MO) of Pelosi's announcement that House Democrats had drawn a line in the sand on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

"I'm not really concerned about the political implications of entitlement cuts," Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA) told The Politico. "I'm concerned about the real-life implications for hard-working Americans who depend on these programs."

"Social Security did not cause our deficit," agreed Rep. Andre Carson (D-IN). "It needs to be protected, not attacked so Republicans can preserve tax cuts for millionaires."

"Don't insult us," Pelosi told Obama budget director Jack Lew. "You don't know how to count."

"You need the Democratic Caucus to pass this," explained Rep. Gerald Connolly (D-VA), who figured Obama and his Republican cohort would need at least 100 Democratic Legislators to get any debt ceiling deal through the House. Pelosi and House Dems frozen out of this Spring's government-shutdown budget talks had been forced to vote for a deal they hadn't been consulted on just to bail out Obama and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) when the Republican leader couldn't muster the 218 votes he needed. Obama and Boehner need Democratic votes again, since so many Republicans were so deluded they promised not to raise the debt ceiling under any conditions.

Tea Party brainiac and caucus leader Michele Bachmann (R-MN) vowed she "will not vote to increase the debt ceiling," a completely predictable position for someone who thinks nine-year-old John Quincy Adams freed the slaves.

But, even Michele Bachmann, or any other Republican, hadn't suggested cuts to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for a debt ceiling hike. Even those recidivist plutocrat-coddlers had been clever enough to steer clear of politics' third rails after poking a track with Rep. Paul Ryan's Medicare Couponization scheme and getting their hair frizzed by a sizzling jolt.

Obama thought up slashing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid all by his lonesome. With Friday's jobs report showing the economy adding a minuscule 18,000 jobs last month and unemployment rising to 9.2%, Obama thought up channelling Herbert Hoover as the way to prosperity all on his own.

"With all this money the private sector has," said Rep. John Larson (D-CT), referring to the nearly $2 trillion cash horde corporate America is already sitting on, "we keep hearing from the other side, 'We're going to cut our way to prosperity.' How has that helped this economy?"

It hasn't, and now that other side has Barack Hussein Obama.

Poll: Americans Favor Social Security, Medicare Over Deficit Reduction

Not surprisingly, a minority of wealthy Republicans is controlling the agenda on Capitol Hill, forcing President Barack Obama and Democrats to accept demands the vast majority of the American people oppose, a new poll revealed.

While House and Senate Republicans unconscionably hold the normally pro forma raising of the nation's debt ceiling hostage to their incessant demands for tax giveaways to their wealthy patrons, and covet plundering Social Security and Medicare in the name of deficit reduction, Americans by a two-to-one margin want Social Security and Medicare benefits to be left alone, a new Pew Research Center poll released Thursday discovered.

When asked which was more important, 60% of Americans said keeping Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are, while 32% said taking steps to reduce the deficit.

If anyone had any question who made up that 32% , the poll found that across all ages, income groups, and political affiliations, only Republicans making more than $75,000 a year said deficit reduction was more important than keeping Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are.

And, Republicans making $75,000 or much, much more a year are the very intransigent Republican hostage-takers who are driving the agenda on Capitol Hill. Once again, the lunatic Republican minority of selfish rich was driving the national agenda in a direction no one but themselves wanted to go.

Among those Republicans making $75,000 or much, much more, 63% said reducing the deficit was more important, and 29% said keeping Social Security and Medicare benefits the same was more important.

Not that wealth was the only driver for slashing entitlements while obsessing about debt. Among Democrats making $75,000 or more, 68% said keeping Social Security and Medicare benefits unchanged was more important, versus 28% who said reducing the deficit was more important.

Apparently, there was a difference between Democrats who were well off and Republicans who were well off. Apparently, Democrats had a sense of social responsibility and nationhood, while Republicans were callous, greedy, self-centered narcissists who could expect trouble with the Christmas Ghosts.

Among lower income groups, Democrats making $30,000 or less a year favored keeping benefits the same over reducing the deficit 72% to 22%. Surprisingly, among Republicans making $30,000 a year or less, keeping entitlement benefits the same trumped deficit reduction 62% to 33%.

Clearly, Republicans making $30,000 or less had voted against their own financial interests.

Even Republicans making $30,000-$75,000 favored preserving benefits over deficit reduction by 53% to 38%.

When divided into age groups, younger Americans tended to favor deficit reduction a bit more, but party affiliation was still more important. Democrats 18-34 said they favored preserving benefits over deficit reduction 63% to 34%, a gap that widened as the group aged, until those aged 65 and over favored preserving benefits over deficit reduction 81% to 7%.

Young Republicans 18-34, favored preserving benefits over deficit reduction 48% to 46%. By the time they got to age 35-49, they'd given up any pretense of social responsibility, entered full ogrehood, and favored deficit reduction 51% to 43%, probably figuring they were well on their way up the corporate ladder with a nice big house, a Mercedes, and a place in Aspen. Those numbers slipped by age 50-64 to favoring benefits 48% to 42%, as their prospects for a big killing dimmed, their big house was underwater, and they'd blown their retirement portfolio on that Aspen fiasco. By the time they were 65 and over, 52% favored preserving benefits, versus 35%, who apparently had accumulated fat trust funds and lacked any moral compass when considering the masses whose backs they'd run roughshod over to secure their cushy lifestyle.

Despite months of Republican deficit reduction harangues continuously highlighted on Fox News and the corporate media, the poll found support for preserving entitlement benefits had only eroded to 60% today from 70% in 1995, and support for deficit reduction had only risen to 32% today from 24% in 1995.

With that much media hysteria for so long on a subject, Madison Avenue should have been able to convince everyone in America to buy multiples of any unspeakably ugly thing you could imagine at exorbitant prices. Nehru jackets. Anything with Hanna Montana on it.

Moreover, 61% of Americans said those on Medicare already paid enough for their benefits, while 31% said they should pay more. Undoubtedly, that 31% included Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who schemed to dismantle Medicare, hand all its money to insurance company cronies, and force seniors to pay retail for private insurance using vouchers the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office calculated wouldn't cover even a third of the cost of premiums, deductibles. co-pays and other expenses.

58% of Americans said low-income persons shouldn't have their Medicaid benefits taken away, and yup, 37% said low-income persons should be left to rot and die horribly and miserably without any health care benefits at all. Anyone unsure who, exactly, comprised that 37% just hasn't been paying attention.

Thus, the vast majority of Americans have to hope that President Barack Obama isn't one of those 27% of Democrats aged 35-49 who favored deficit reduction over maintaining entitlement benefits. According to his birth certificate, long form or short, the President turns 50 on August 4, and the likelihood he'd favor deficit reduction over maintaining benefits drops to 16% versus 77%. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said America hits its debt ceiling and won't be able to fund operations Aug. 2.

Hopefully, the President won't make a decision he'll come to regret four weeks from now.

Republicans Launch New Drive To Plunder Social Security

Momentarily stymied in their effort to plunder Medicare and hand all its money to their wealthy insurance industry cronies, Republicans have revived their efforts to plunder Social Security and hand all its money to their wealthy Wall Street cronies.

A cadre of House Republicans led by Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX) Friday floated a bill that would let those foolish enough to do so opt out of contributing the 6.2% of their wages that goes to Social Security, where, as US Treasuries, it joins the trillions held in the most secure and coveted form capital can take, and instead toss it into the hands of Wall Street speculators who'll pile it onto the roulette wheel of whatever trendy market bubble they want to take a spin on.

Their employers would continue to contribute the 6.2% matching funds to Social Security for 15 years, after which the employee could have the matching funds also sent to the Wall Street counting house crap table. Of course, since market bubbles blow up every ten years or so, the employee would probably have second thoughts by then.

Republicans have got that angle covered, figuring that if enough people were stupid enough to opt out of Social Security, the Social Security trust funds would've gone belly up, and there'd be no traditional Social Security left for anyone to fall back on.

And the Wall Street cronies will have added significantly to their collection of mega-yachts and mega-mansions.

Republicans had shuffled their Social Security privatization scam onto the back burner because, despite GOP lies to the contrary, Social Security is solvent for decades, and with slight tweaks to contributions (making the rich - horrors! - kick in a little more), will remain solvent for the foreseeable future. Despite Republicans' deepest desires, they left Social Security privatization out of Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) 2012 Budget.

But, ever since Republicans got thrashed in their stronghold New York 26th Congressional District special election and Ryan, author of the infamous Medicare couponization scam, has been needing bodyguards to survive walking to and from his own town hall meetings, Republicans have been forced to lay low on their scheme to dismantle Medicare, hand all its money to private insurers, and pawn off future seniors with worthless vouchers the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office figured wouldn't cover a third of the cost of premiums, deductibles, co-pays and other expenses. Oh, sure, they still talk tough, but they keep their eyes peeled in the event some heavy object comes hurtling their way.

Bored with holding the nation's ability to issue bonds and borrow money hostage to ever greater tax subsidies for their rich patrons, Republicans have quietly shifted their scheme to plunder Social Security from the back burner to the one in front. Besides, the trans-national plutocrats who wield the far ends of GOP pols' choke chains have begun to yank pretty hard at the prospect of Republicans' refusing to raise the nation's debt ceiling, forcing the US to default on maturing obligations, and wreaking havoc in said trans-national plutocrats' beloved bond markets. The US Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Wholesale Distributors, and the National Association of Manufacturers have all conducted heart-to-heart sit-downs with GOP pols intent on crashing the debt ceiling.

Republicans might figure plundering Social Security would prove their loyalty to their wealthy overlords and get them to stop yanking so hard on those chains.

Sessions and a cohort of GOP eager-beavers, including Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) and Lamar Smith (R-TX), must figure their opt-out scheme is just the ticket to pander to and coddle their nervous Wall Street minders. Their Savings Account for Every American Act (SAFE) would allow the uninformed to send 6.2% of their wages to their SAFE account instead of to Social Security. Of course, even without SAFE, anyone who wanted to engage in high-risk behavior can shovel as much money as they like into mutual funds, equities, junk bonds or unprotected sex with dubious partners. Social Security is the safety net that catches you when you inevitably roll snake eyes, and Republicans can't stand that it's there protecting you instead of in some greedy old corporate tycoon's fat fingers getting stuffed into some stripper's g-string.

Once, plutocrats needed American labor to build and run history's greatest economic engine. Then, through the miracle of acquisitions, leveraged buyouts and mergers, through the magic of slash-and-burn management, downsizing, outsourcing and offshoring, plutocrats didn't need American labor anymore.

Then, plutocrats needed American consumers to buy goods and homes and home furnishings and services and cars and knick-knacks. They pumped up the real estate market with George W. Bush's "Ownership Society," bamboozled Americans into using their homes as ATMs with cash-out refinancing, and repackaged and resold and reinsured ballooning pyramids of funny money while consumers gorged themselves on 8-mile-per-gallon SUVs, bass boats, redwoods decks and Carrera marble kitchens. When the rich crashed the world financial system, American consumers crashed with it. But, through the miracle of emerging international markets and the magic of burgeoning new middle classes in India and China, plutocrats didn't need American consumers any more.

For thirty years, rain or shine, war or peace, good times or bad, Republicans chanted the mantra, "More tax breaks for the rich, more spending cuts on everyone else." If there were budget surpluses, as after the Clinton years, Republicans called for, "More tax breaks for the rich, more spending cuts on everyone else." If there are budget deficits, as now, Republicans call for, "More tax breaks for the rich, more spending cuts on everyone else." After thirty years, Republicans succeeded in concentrating 84% of America's wealth in the hands of 20% of America's wealthiest. There's little left to plunder except Medicare and Social Security.

In fact, giving the rich more tax breaks and subsidies while slashing spending on everything else has nothing to do with creating jobs, or speeding up growth, or encouraging innovation, or easing inflation, or anything else of the sort. Giving the rich more tax breaks and subsidies while slashing spending on everything else has only one effect: it makes the rich even richer. It concentrates more and more wealth into fewer and fewer hands.

Republicans have proven their commitment to enriching the few, and will be relentless in their effort to plunder America's last great reserves for their wealthy masters. They will lurch, roll, rumble and roar inexorably toward their goal, an indefatigable juggernaut focused on plundering, pillaging and pilfering every last dime in Medicare, in Social Security and in every ordinary Americans' pocket.

Scramble to Plunder Social Security Gains Steam

More Beltway politicians are jumping onto the Let's Plunder Social Security bandwagon every day. Confident that the public has been brainwashed to believe the Social Security trust funds are broke anyway, which they aren't, more and more politicians are scrambling to get in on the plunder.  Every one of them wants to be able to tell his plutocrat cronies that he, too, helped pilfer the American people's last great cache of money so it could be laid at the plutocrats' feet.

On Friday, 64 Senators signed a letter to President Obama pledging that they would steal money from Social Security and give it to the rich.  32 Republicans were joined by 32 Democrats in a bipartisan show of disdain of Americans. The 64 represent a veto-proof supermajority who have thrown down a gauntlet challenging President Barak Obama's promise that he wouldn't slash Social Security.

Under the guise of "deficit reduction," the immensely popular current iteration of excuses to take money away from services Americans really need so the rich can keep collecting jewel-encrusted private jets, the 64 lapdogs for the international monied elite wrote President Obama that discussions for the 2012 Budget would "include discretionary spending cuts, entitlement changes and tax reform."

"Entitlement changes" means slashing and privatizing Social Security as well as Medicare and Medicaid.  And, "tax reform" doesn't mean tax increases for the rich who have absconded with the nation's wealth without paying taxes.  It most likely means reducing taxes on the rich even further.

So far, President Obama's kept pretty quiet about what he's got up his sleeve for the nation's old-age safety net and the biggest pot of cash left that politicos can grab and dole out to their wealthy pals.  He's said he won't weigh in until Congress has had their discussions, and that he wouldn't accept a straight out dismantling of Social Security. The President has said:

"...we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations. We must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans' guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market."

Those are fine words, but Republicans have made clear their goal is privatization, and Obama hasn't yet shown any resolve in standing up to Republicans on anything they really want. He's caved on extending the Bush tax cuts, and hasn't put tax revenue reform on the table to address debt and budget shortfalls. He's pretty much happy to give Wall Street anything it wants, handling the Mortgage Meltdown villains with kid gloves, and backing off on banking reform.

The US Senate has thrown down a significant gauntlet, stating they were going after Social Security, and the 64 signers gives Obama significant cover for allowing Social Security to be "privatized," the euphemism for handing all the money in the Social Security trust funds to Wall Street money moguls to blow on booze and high-priced private entertainment.

There are no more private sector pension funds to plunder, the private sector unions having been broken and bankrupted, the companies they worked at mismanaged out of existence, merged and acquired, and all the jobs downsized and offshored.  There are no more public sector pension funds, the private sector unions gutted of their bargaining rights, the pensions funds paupered to subsidize plutocrats. Only the Social Security trust funds are left, and the rich have decided that no money should be set aside for anyone who hasn't robbed and pillaged and lied and bribed his way to mega-wealth.

The rich have decided they must have the money in the Social Security trust funds, and they've sent their Republican assassins to get it done, spearheaded by Tea Party zealots like Rand Paul and Paul Ryan. Dismantling Medicare and pawning off older Americans with a handful of worthless vouchers and coupons will be easy in comparison. 

America is no longer a democracy.  If it were, Congress would have heeded 81% of Americans and slapped an income tax surcharge on millionaires. America is a plutocracy, where the rich not only get whatever they want, their toadies and vassals vie amongst themselves to find new ways to plunder and pillage on their masters' behalf.

GOP, Tea Party Aim to Plunder Social Security

As surely as the sun rises and sets, Republicans scheme to plunder ever more from the American people. As surely as the seasons turn, Republicans proffer their plunder to their wealthy masters.

For thirty years, since the Cowboy President launched the Republican assault on America, tax giveaways to the rich have plundered every facet of Americans' lives.  Lusting for ever more untaxed profits, their cronies have wrung every penny from American industry, buying and merging companies to sell off their assets and move their operations to China, or Indonesia, or anyplace where workers could be most brutally exploited.  They've wrung every penny from American business, slashing payrolls and outsourcing and offshoring and winnowing benefits. 

Republicans have wrung every penny from private sector pensions, slashing and burning and exchanging retirement security for stock vouchers rendered worthless in the next bursting financial bubble.  There used to be many companies where workers organized to provide for their futures, only to be told that management greed and incompetence had left everyone bereft, except for the mismanaging managers who floated away on golden parachutes.

From Wisconsin to Indiana to your home town, Republicans are today wringing every penny from public sector pensions, pillaging retirements that were supposed to be secure, but weren't because Wall Street greed and incompetence had left everyone insolvent, except for the hedge fund managers and financial service CEOs who floated away with billion-dollar compensation packages.

Most of America's wealth has been siphoned into the pockets of the handful of international plutocrats who hold court inside the Washington Beltway. One of the few large caches left of America's wealth lies in our Social Security trust funds.

Republicans covet those monies.  It is anathema to them that money could be put aside for ordinary people to live their sunset years with dignity.  The Republican hates that a grandmother is paying for groceries, or an old uncle is paying for heat during a cold winter, with money that could be used to buy a diamond-studded G-string to adorn the supple hips of some rich GOP contributor's young contracted companion. Republicans want to hand the money in the Social Security trust funds to their plutocrat masters, just as loyal vassals mounted on war horses thundered through peasant villages to scour plunder for their medieval overlords.

Republicans and their corporate media incessantly, unceasingly spout lie after lie that Social Security is broke, and all the money for it must be handed to their big money cronies or the Biblical Apocalypse and the Mayan End of Time and Nostradamus' end of the world will all explode on you all at once.

This is nonsense.  Social Security is solvent for over twenty years if we did nothing at all, and would remain solvent for the foreseeable future with the slightest tweaks in payroll taxes.

That Social Security is in trouble is the Republicans' Big Lie, told over and over again as loudly and with as much venom as possible to make people hand the Social Security trust fund dollars to their Wall Street pals.  Republicans say they must take money away from the Social Security trust funds and Americans must hand their money to Wall Street financiers like AIG, or B of A, or Lehman Brothers - well not Lehman Brothers, as they mismanaged themselves out of existence - or Bear Stearns - well, not Bear Stearns either, as they too mismanaged themselves out of existence - or any of the other financial institutions that writes fat checks to Republican PACs and pays for pricey Republican junkets.

Now, if anyone does want to sink money into exchange traded funds, equities, bonds, commodity futures, or repackaged credit default swaps, he can. If anyone wants to pile stacks of chips onto the Wall Street roulette wheel and bet the farm, he can. Americans can do anything they want with the money they take home in their paychecks, if they're lucky enough to have one. Social Security was meant to be the safety net that each American who has worked all her life could count on when the corporate overseer had stroked his last lash, something held out against the unpredictable vagaries of banks and markets. But the Republican must devour every dollar and leave nothing for the ordinary American.

Having plundered every other cache, the Republican must plunder Social Security, for his insatiable plutocrat master must have every coin to expand his fleet of private jets, to expand his armada of mega-yachts, to expand his harem of private contract service providers. The Big Lie about Social Security is repeated solely for this purpose. The Republican seeks not to secure retirees' futures, but to keep the champagne flowing in the Park Avenue penthouse parties.  The Republican seeks not to strengthen America's finances, but to keep the Biarritz weekends, the Maldives getaways, the Lago di Como idles turning in the datebook.

The big money financiers have used outlandish accounting schemes to buy and sell piles of funny money, repackage pyramids of indefinable exotic instruments, growing fat on financial bubbles of science fiction fantasies that leave everyone else broke when the bubble bursts. From the Dot Com bubble to the Mortgage Meltdown, these snake oil charlatans have scammed every other dollar out of America, and now only the Social Security trust funds are left.

Perfectly on cue, the vultures descend on every Americans' retirement security. Republicans threaten to shut down the government unless they are handed the Social Security trust funds. Republicans threaten Armageddon unless the last cache of ordinary Americans' money is handed to the reckless rich who have already plundered, and blown, every other fortune they could get their hands on.

Social Security is safe, and solvent, and will be able to provide for Americans' needs for generations to come, as long as we don't let Republicans plunder this last, precious resource.

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

Republicans Are Autocrats for the Plutocrats

Another day, another poll showing Republicans blustering and bludgeoning their way toward a GOP plutocrat Nirvana in defiance of the American peoples' will.

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll revealed 60% of Americans feared the Republicans' rampant budget-slashing would harm their families. While most respondents expressed concern about federal budget deficits and growing debt, Americans oppose Republicans cutting education, Social Security and Medicare.

This comes a day after another NBC/Wall Street Journal poll showing 77% of Americans support Wisconsin state workers' right to collective bargaining, while Republicans blitz to strip those rights away

Despite the clear message that Americans oppose the GOP plutocrats' agenda, the Republicans are pushing ahead with their heinous schemes. 

While 74% of Americans (including one former Shell Oil Company CEO, John Hofmeister) oppose extending tax subsidies for the oil and gas industries,  Republicans voted unanimously to extend those tax subsidies. 76% of Americans want to ax unnecessary weapon systems, but lavish giveaways to their defense industry cronies is one of the few sacred expenditures Republicans will not touch.

And the 81% who favor raising taxes on the very rich would probably make some Republican death list, if the Republicans hadn't already decided the very rich would never be taxed, and people who think they should be are simply nonentities.

Oblivious to the hew and cry rising across the nation, Republicans continue to loudly drone their mantra of more tax subsidies for the wealthy, and more service cuts for everyone else.  Republicans lecture one and all that public sector workers unions are the cause of states' budget woes, even though it is obvious that the culprit is the Republicans' ever-spiralling tax giveaways to GOP plutocrats for their ever-expanding fleets of private jets and mega-yachts.

Republicans, like all autocrats, specialize in ear-splitting harangues completely dissociated from facts.  They say they want to address budget shortfalls and create jobs while pushing an agenda that would devastate the nation's economy and annihilate tens of thousands of jobs.  They stand smugly before TV cameras and continue to spout lies as obvious as Muammar Khadafy's claim that all Libyans love him, and that there are no protests in his country.

Clearly, Republicans are unconcerned about dictating policies contrary to the electorates' wishes.  Their actions would indicate they consider themselves above the democratic process. Their actions are consistent with those of autocrats who feel no need to act on behalf of their citizens. Are Republicans ready to do away with the electoral process altogether, or do they just know the voting machines have been rigged by their cronies at Diebold?

The Republican juggernaut careens ahead unimpeded, busting unions, crippling government, and devastating the environment certain that the wealthiest and most ruthless have absolute dominion over the world and all its people.