When VA Sen. Mark Warner declaimed recently that "the Democrats are going to have to give on entitlement reform," I saw red. And what does it mean to "see red"? Red in this case is not a code word for indebtedness or the loopy political bent of the Tea Party states. It's anger. Why? Because Social Security is NOT some entitlement, not some giveaway we're didn't earn but are "entitled" to because FDR felt sorry for old people at the end of the Great Depression. We've already paid for the Social Security checks we'll get in our old age. That money has come out of our paychecks, starting with the first, bite by bite, and it has been invested in a special trust fund to be used for no other purpose.
I hope Warner considers the "reform" needed to be stopping the raids on the SS trust funds to finance the idiot wars and tax cuts for the wealthy visited upon us in recent years. It's hard to believe he is a Democrat and not some mean-spirited Republican in disguise.
They can start by cutting Soc. Security disability checks to the "red" states, which a recent report on CBS said are overwhelmingly claimed (most of them fraudulently) in those states. They can then close all the military bases in the South. In Tennessee the two bases employ most of the entire state (that's probably also true for South Carolina). Then they can forget about FEMA handouts the next time Mississippi has a major flood, not to mention that FEMA repaired Jefferson Davis' mansion (his "Presidential Library" ahem) after Katrina, etc., etc. THEN let's hear them talk about "entitlements."
ReplyDeleteHallelujah!! Great response, Diana! you've done your homework!!
ReplyDeleteDiana: These people are leeches on the body politic, but I feel sorry for them. They have lousy lives.
ReplyDeleteHattie, I agree, they are "leeches on the body politic" and have been for centuries. So long in fact that I think it's become cellular with them.
ReplyDeleteThey're not happy critters, that's for sure, and as we know "misery loves company" so they try to take the whole country down with them.
One good thing though, they have come into the light of public scrutiny so that more people are aware of their danger and the need to kick them out of the House in the midterm. These people cannot be trusted with any kind of power.
I think it's important to know the history to understand where they're coming from. I just came across an interesting diary entry on Daily Kos that connects the dots:
ReplyDeleteThe Truth About the Confederacy
"If you’re one of the many Americans who don’t really know that much about the Civil War, you have probably been perplexed by the number of wrong-wing Republican politicians who have made open statements of admiration the past year or two for the Confederate ideas of states rights and secession. This very lengthy diary is designed to fully inform you what the Confederacy was really like – a society suffering acutely from class differences; a society ruled by a slave holding oligarchy that was sickeningly arrogant and grasping, as well as racist. A number of myths about have been developed about the “Lost Cause” of the Confederacy for over a century, and those myths and lies are probably going to be repeated so often the coming days and weeks that you’re going to want to puke. My intent for this diary is to help shatter those myths and lies."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/11/966022/-The-Truth-About-the-Confederacy