by James Glaser
February 17, 2005

George Bush has been running around the country telling everyone who his handlers allow in to listen to him, that if we don't adopt his privatizing plan of Social Security, the retirement plans of the nation will fail.

Right behind the President are a group of administration officials who explain to any media people who ask (no one can ask the President any real questions) that Bush's plan will have a "net neutral effect" on the future Social Security shortfall. That means that Bush's plan does nothing to help with the money problem for SS, but the cost of his plan could hurt it in the near future.

So if George W. is not helping the Social Security problem, who do you think he is helping? Well for starters there are the financial service companies who will be taking a fee off the top of the billions invested.

Then let's think about what happens when everyone's retirement is tied to the stock market. Will Congress want to tax corporations? Those taxes could hurt the nation's retirement portfolio. What about telling corporations that they can't pollute or that they have to put millions into cleanup of their past polluting of our land and water? Could that hurt the portfolio too?

George Bush wants to help the rich and their corporations and I am all for that, to a point. But what happens thirty or forty years down the road when the Bush plan gets in the way of good government and Congress is afraid of doing anything that might jeopardize the retirement of the nation.

If Bush's plan doesn't work, what does he care? In truth, by the time we find out, he will most likely be long dead and gone. Yes the rich families in America will be a lot richer, so they can say to the American people. "Let them eat cake" and our grand children will have to clean up the mess. Meanwhile, the people who put George in power, the people who put up the MONEY, will be reaping their reward, which is MORE MONEY!

Corporations are not people, but they want to be. They want to have control so that they can make more money and if they make a mess, well the tax payers can take care of it.

Social Security has worked just fine for over 75 years with the government running it. If Corporations start taking it over and Bush's plan is the first step in that direction, the people who have the really good retirement will be those who own most of those corporations and that is not going to be the American worker with his small private account. However if you take those small private accounts and add them all together and take your one or two percent for managing them, plus a government fee, you are talking about the potential for billions of dollars in profit... and that is why we have the Bush plan.