Monday October 6, 2008, 8:31 am
If there's any silver lining to the current credit crisis, it is the widening realization that forcing people to manage their own retirement accounts is nasty and irresponsible public policy. It's one thing to manage your 401(k), knowing a fixed pension is also coming your way from Social Security. It is another to have to manage your Social Security investments as well, which is what privatization is all about.

Reality bit over the last month. Not only do markets fall, but even money market funds may not be safe. Who knew? Not the pros. So how can the amateurs? There was the retired woman on the front page of the Wall Street Journal who had one third of her next egg in the local bank, now gone belly up. She couldn't imagine that bank's demise. But let's not forget the thousands of employees who lost most of their personally managed retirement funds at Enron not too long ago. And countless other examples.

How can a decent society expect people to manage their entire retirement next egg on their own? How dare they call that personal responsibility? Yet that is exactly what the privatizers, now led by John McCain, would like us to do. Barack Obama has taken on the McCain privatization plan in ads in Florida. He should take them on nationwide. Grandchildren are watching their grandparents get punished by the unexpected market woes. Even the young are beginning to understand the cruel folly of privatization.

On top of which, people increasingly must manage their retirement accounts as business abandons the defined benefit pension for the defined contribution plan.

Let's devote the nation's attention to guaranteeing the fixed benefits of Social Security and put privatization (including medical savings accounts) to bed for a long night's sleep.

Monday October 6, 2008, 9:14 am
Noted, thanks Blue,
Not only should Obama bring this up in every state he visits he should also explain how privatizing social security really works, and the consequences of choosing to privatize part of your social security retirement benefits.

Here’s how privatizing works: Under Bush’s plan one would privatize 10% of their income, and it would be a voluntary program for those who wanted to privatize part of their earnings. What Bush did not say that I found out by visiting www.socialsecurity.org and talking to a social security representative this is what I have learned about privatizing social security. Let’s say for example you elect to put 10% of you income in your private fund for 40 years. That is 40 years that social security does not deduct from your wages or salary. The money that you have privatized has to be paid back to social security because it collects money and puts it in a trust fund to pay for benefits for newly retired people, disability benefits and SSI benefits. For example if your 10% for 40 years comes to let’s say $60,000.00 your benefit amount would be reduced until the $60,000.00 has been fully repaid to social security. On average social security takes the same 10% that you have withheld in a private account. So in order for you to collect your full benefits all the money you privatized will have to be paid back to social security. For this reason it is a bad plan. Bush’s plan was modeled after the Chilean Social Security Privatization Plan and most Chileans want to go back to the old system. Augusto Pinochet made privatization mandatory when the US installed him as president after the legally elected president was assassinated by CIA covert operations. Before it became mandatory it was voluntary. Those workers who chose not to privatize their money received more money in social security benefits and did not have to pay back any money. Those who privatized did not get as much money, and had to pay the money back that was privatized.

One person who privatized his social security received approximately $300.00 a month in retirement benefits. One person who did not privatize their social security received around $800.00 a month in retirement benefits. Guess who made out better in the long run. You guessed it, the person who did not privatize, because that person did not have to pay back the money that was privatized. It sounds like a good plan, and that you will collect more money in retirement benefits, but the truth is you will not.

I’m not certain that the explanation of how privatizing really works is still on their web site, but it would be worth checking out. If you can’t find it you can use their search engine. Just type privatizing social security, and if the page is still available it will explain in better detail than what I have explained here.

Do not allow the government to privatize our social security benefits, because in the end we will get far less money than we think, and we will have to pay back any amount of money we privatize. This is the nuts and bolts on privatizing social security.

Monday October 6, 2008, 5:58 pm
Senior Citizens Who Vote for McCain Should be Required
to Renounce Any Claim to Social Security or Medicare --

Let's make it quite simple: any person over 65 who votes for John McCain should first be required to renounce all claims to Social Security and Medicare.

Why? It's quite simple.

McCain's largest age group of support (by percentage) is Americans over the age of 65. Since McCain and the Republican Party have as their main message (other than "we are the party of white people") shrinking the size of government and letting everyone sink or swim on their own, I do not believe that seniors who vote for McCain are entitled to Social Security or Medicare, and that's just for starters as far as government support of the elderly.

John "7-11 houses" McCain himself proudly collects and cashes his social security check (and we are not making this up), as well receiving a disability check from the government. He also has received government medical care (which might have otherwise bankrupted a struggling working stiff due to McCain's history of multiple melanomas) for decades. In fact, McCain's entire adult life -- except for a brief stint working for his wife's beer distributorship -- has been on the public payroll. In short, we the taxpayers, have paid for McCain's salary and benefits. (You would think that with a fortune worth over $100 million dollars, enough that he can gamble away tens of thousands of dollars a year, he might sign over his social security check to charity, but not John McCain. He's all for "socialism" for number one, himself.)

McCain is a glaring, gluttonous example of the GOP denouncing "socialist" government programs, but benefiting from them at every turn. There's only a couple of Communist countries left in the world, and the Marxist ideology is basically dead and buried, but go to CafePress.com and see how many buttons and stickers claim that liberals (and Obama) are Communists. It's like there are a group of right wing Republicans (that's probably a redundant phrase) whose brains are petrified rock, solidified during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

So here's the nut of it. If you are a senior citizen in a trailer park or even in a luxurious condo in the Sarasota/Bradenton area (just as an example: the former congressional district briefly represented by the infamous Katherine Harris) and you talk over your bingo games and in your barber shops about what a "liberal socialist threat" Barack Obama is to America, we have a suggestion for you: burn your Medicare and Social Security Cards and send a letter to the U.S. Government informing them that you are now going to personally pay your own bills for healthcare and want no more Social Security checks sent to you.

You see how easy it is to personally reject "socialism" in your life.

Oh, and when you get too feeble to live on your own, remember that you can't sign your assets over to your children and then have Medicaid pay for your nursing home care, because that's "socialism" too, right? So save up, cause that nursing home care gets costly without the government covering it.

And if the $700 billion (you know that it's going to be a trillion or more in the end) socialism for Wall Street scheme doesn't work and your bank collapses with your life savings down the drain, please tell Washington that you don't want them to insure your savings because that's "socialism." You'll just eat the loss of your retirement savings because you're a John McCain sort of person (not that he would turn back the FDIC insurance check from the government.)

Oh, and if you are a senior for McCain because you want to prevent "dreaded liberal socialism" from spreading and are disabled, please return your government disability checks to the Treasury. You can personally strike against "big government" all by yourself. Just send the check back.

And if you get senior discounts on public transportation, stop taking them. Demand you pay the full amount in your crusade against "socialism." And when you need rehabilitation homecare because you fall and break your hip, tell the "big brother government" to take a hike and that you'll pay for it yourself.

I can go on and on with easy, personal actions seniors who support McCain and the GOP "war against the welfare state" can take to rid their lives of "socialism." There are so many daily protests that you can do to increase your personal expenditures and get government financial assistance out of your lives.

So before you vote for John McCain and Sarah "I bilked the state taxpayers for daily travel home and didn't even pay taxes on it" Palin, please show your solidarity with their cause by renouncing and rejecting all forms of "socialist" government financial assistance.

Any volunteers?

I don't see any hands. How come?