[Editor's Note: choice words and salty language ahead.]
The Republican pre-primary is in full swing, meaning that
there are a whole bunch of desperate shysters wanting to get their hands on
that sweet, sweet Koch brothers cash.
The winner of the fund raising war in the GOP primary stage is usually
the winner of the nomination, so this is prime time for potential also-rans
like Chris Christie to make themselves relevant again with a money transfusion.
So what has the Most High New Jersey Bridge Troll done? He’s decided to talk about “responsible” and “honest”
fiscal policy. What this means
specifically is proposing raising the retirement age to 69, and then making
Social Security a much reduced provision that would not even paid out to a
large number of retirees. Christie, in
typically mendacious fashion, has spun all this as “telling hard truths,”
assuming that his listeners believe, like he does, that the money to sustain
old age benefits does not exist.
Of course, we all know that it does. We live in the richest nation on earth, one
where plutocrats are amassing ever-increasing piles of lucre. Just this week comes the news that during a “down”
year the top 25 hedge fund managers were still able to pay themselves bonuses that altogether add up to more than twice all of the money made by all the kindergarten teachers in America last year. James Simons made $2.1 billion in 2011, about the equivalent of the yearly wages of 140,000 minimum wage workers. Imagine
that, the “bonus” to a select group of bankers eclipses the sweat and muscle
expended by literally hundreds of thousands of laborers. They also paid a lower tax rate than I did as a teacher last year.
And yet we are told that we are to sacrifice
even more, that the nation simply can’t afford to give them a secure retirement
before we might give out from overwork.
When I hear the fiscal hawks talk about “hard truths” I know
they are really spinning some diarrhea-soft grade A horseshit. What they really want is a system where the
wealthy can amass even bigger fortunes than before, and perhaps to shovel money
out of Social Security and let their criminal friends on Wall Street play with it. Perhaps due to the pernicious persistence of
a Puritan streak in this nation’s culture, the media elite eat up this “hard
truth” crap and never, ever question the motive, always taking these con artists at face value. Because young voters are so
far away from retirement, they do not take to the streets about being
bamboozled.
Make no mistake, Gen Xers and Millenials, they are out to
bamboozle you. I made my first FICA
payment at the tender age of 13, and have been paying into the system almost
continuously from that time. All that
money has gone to pay for people already in the system, and I was glad to do
it, since I knew that the next generations would do the same for me. Now that contract will be broken, and I will
spend the rest of my working life paying for the same Baby Boomers who got
cheap college education and plentiful jobs to have a much cushier retirement
than I will ever have. It will be the
final insult in a degrading generational war that many in the younger
generations have no clue is being waged against them.
To consign future generations to the dung heap in their old
age so that the plutocrats, hedge fund managers, and bankers dare not make a
greater sacrifice is the height of fiscal irresponsibility. To break apart the social contract that so
many have benefited from is a horrible thing to do, not something deserving of
the canting hosannas of “truth telling” so often heard in the more fatuous
corners of our mediascape. Please, for
fuck’s sake, stop pretending that the attempt to end Social Security as we know
it is anything more than a heinous crime of enormous proportions.
