George Carlin said it: "They're comin' for your Social Security money." The anti-"entitlement" propaganda is endless. The last few times I picked up the Wall Street Journal, I saw appeals to undo Social Security -- at least two or three pieces per edition. And now Florida Senator Marco Rubio has come out and said, in a very public forum, that Social Security and Medicare "weakened us as a people."
Not so long ago, someone in Rubio's position wouldn't have dared to say such a thing. Not so baldly, not so loudly, not so unabashedly.
So. Why is Canada (with its nasty old socialized health insurance) doing better than we are...? They didn't have a banking/housing crisis because sensible regulations prevented it.
Social Security didn't cause the 2008 crisis. Medicare didn't cause it either. But that's what the libertarian fuckers want you to believe.
4 comments:
I was reading an article recently which noted that in the first phase of a crisis, people just switch from one consensus politician to the next. In the second phase, they look for more radical politicans who actually propose something different.
FDR was such a man. He was hated. He was considered to have gone too far but those who studied the issue know now that he didnt go far enough.
We are not far from the time when the Rubios of this country will shut up for fear of what the common people will do to them. The country is divided now but the majority are suffering and have no voice, and the minority feel entitled and strong. This cannot persist.
We are only a few years away from the backlash. When they start reducing social security and medicare it wont be long before people fight back, because they will have no more to lose.
Harry
I agree with what Harry said above. This will not stand. I'd really like to hear Rubio when he stands before his Florida constituents, their silver/white hair blowing in the wind, and tell them that SS is the root of all evil, that the social contract has made them weak.
Seniors vote in huge numbers and they know BS when they hear it. Rubio may believe his PR now, that he's the GOP darling, but keep it up and he'll be out on his keister.
And there will be a tipping point in the country, when the pain and the lies and the mean-mouthed exclamations of the Far Right and their Tea Party handmaidens will go one step too far.
When we get there? Fasten your seatbelts! It won't be pretty.
Peggy Sue
rubio and the other useful idiots and droolers are simply parroting the 'market wisdom' meme, which posits that any action taken which has not run the gauntlet of collective market scrutiny is automatically suspect. no, not suspect, guilty. i recently heard a panel respected *ahem* economic experts debating on the radio about what steps should be taken in the eurozone to stabilize the economic union, and whether such steps will survive the withering analysis of market wisdom. what these morons failed to mention is that the worst basket cases in europe, ireland, spain, greece, were those that were adherents to market wisdom, the wisdom of the quick profit off of dodgy banking practices, unsustainable housing markets, etc. while the most resiliant economies, e.g. germany, the scandanavian counties, maintained conservative banking practices and policies regulating lending and investment in real estate development, that were contrary to the 'market wisdom' of the times.
Social Security didn't cause the 2008 crisis. Medicare didn't cause it either. But that's what the libertarian fuckers want you to believe.
This about sums it up.
I am tempted to point hard combative conservatives here, just because the article is so good.
However, I don't see you typically having long belligerent debates, so perhaps it would be unethical.
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