SCSSC Update
It appears to be catching, Third Columnist Implicated with Payola Charges. Third time is a charm, three strikes and your out? Choose one but now there are three that have been on the payroll. You will hear many people say that these people were already for these positions and therefore paying them did not change their positions or did not cause them to do something against their will. That is not the point! The point is that these people were/are writing columns and going on TV, advocating these policies and not telling the consumer that they are being paid by the government to work on this subject. Is this wrong? Of course it is!

Next we have this, Social Security to promote Bush proposal Agency's employees say SSA should stay out of a political battle:

Social Security officials say the agency is carrying out its mission to educate the public, including more than 47 million beneficiaries, and to support the agenda of President Bush. But agency employees have complained to Social Security officials that they are being conscripted into a political battle over the future of the program. They question the accuracy of recent statements by the agency, and they say that money from the Social Security trust fund should not be used for such advocacy.

"Trust fund dollars should not be used to promote a political agenda," said Dana Duggins, a vice president of the Social Security Council of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents more than 50,000 of the agency's 64,000 workers and has opposed private accounts.

Is this wrong? Of course it is!

Bush has also appointed a wingnut from a right wing think tank to the Social Security Administration (SSA) to help him sell this policy, Critics See Social Security Warnings as Scare Tactics:

They cite as evidence an event held last week by the White House at which Bush engaged in a talk-show-style conversation with people who supported his call for private accounts. Joining the president on stage was Andrew G. Biggs, who advocated private accounts as an analyst at the conservative Cato Institute before Bush appointed him to the position of SSA associate commissioner for retirement policy.

It this wrong? Of course it is! Remember as you will see in the excerpt from the article below, Social Security was not meant to be an investment account, it's an insurance policy.

I was stunned this morning when I read this in my copy of US News & World Report A 'cure' worse than the cold:

Privatization thus gets things upside down. Social Security was not meant to re-create the free market; it was intended to insure against the vagaries and cruelties of the market and to permit Americans to count on the promise that the next generation will take care of them in their old age.

Now the only reason this magazine comes to my house is because it was free when I renewed my subscription to Salon. I would never pay for this magazine's usual pro-Republican and pro-Bush blather. To me it is a comical magazine, as far as it's opinion pieces are concerned, and to see an opinion piece that just trashes the President's proposed plan with the truth was, I must say, amazing and I applaud Mr. Zuckerman.

Paul Krugman shows us once again the way you can tell Bush is lying is because his mouth it open
Little Black Lies

Social Security privatization really is like tax cuts, or the Iraq war: the administration keeps on coming up with new rationales, but the plan remains the same. President Bush's claim that we must privatize Social Security to avert an imminent crisis has evidently fallen flat. So now he's playing the race card.

- posted by Mom/Dad @ 8:52 AM