No Going Back!
Engineering the Dismantling of America
Dhammabucha Rocksprings Meditation
I have been contributing to Social Security for 50 years. Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme. It is not a pyramid scheme.
It anticipated the Baby Boomers and had money put away for that. Reagan and Greenspan stole it. When Reagan asked Greenspan if they could get away with the theft, Greenspan said, “Yes, for thirty years at least.”
Social security is paid for with deductions from my paycheck. It is not a government giveaway. What was given away was our Social Security savings when Reagan and Greenspan stole it.
The current “crisis” caused by that theft could be rectified in one of two simple ways: The government can pay back the three trillion dollars it stole - or simply raise the cap on contributions where the wealthy pay more – they can afford it. For thirty years now, since Reagan, the wealthy with their unfair tax cuts have made a fortune while working class wages have gone nowhere.
And guess what - there is no crisis. Ask any economist. The current wrangling is just a clever way to continue to steal the Social Security excesses by not repaying the Social Security trust fund the three trillion that the government owes it.
Medicare has simple fixes as well. Why should we in America pay three times what the rest of the world pays for drugs and health care? The government should fix prices of drugs and healthcare related costs. By the way, because of the nature of the health field, the old tired argument that price controls create a shortage would not apply here.
How can Americans fight back when they are held captive by insurance companies and drug companies? We can’t decide not to pay for health care; it’s not like deciding not to buy a new car. When you get sick there is no choice. In third world countries there is a choice – die or get well on your own. In America, if it ever comes to that . . . well, look out politicians.
Why should we all give up our Social security and Medicare when the military wastes much more money than either of these programs cost? Why do we maintain hundreds and hundreds of bases all over the world? Only us, nobody else? Bush’s wars were a disaster. Politically and economically. He was a stupid cowboy.
His eight years in office has crippled our country and now the Republicans are using the budget shortfall as a hammer to destroy our social safety net, which they hate and have hated for decades, just waiting for their chance to engineer a crisis so that the social safety nets can be dismantled. This is class warfare.
The debt limit has been raised 70 times in history by every president without a debate because it was the right thing to do. But this time the Tea Party got cute, and look what happened because of their stupidity. Borrowing money to get out of a recession has been going on forever and it works. It doesn’t work when one party pulls tricks to dishonor and weaken a president that they hate. It’s obviously a racial thing.
We are subsidizing corporate and banking salaries and bonuses that are going through the roof. The banks got bailed out but we have to give up our Social Security and Medicare? How is that? Who runs this country? Who depends upon the consumer to provide 70% of our GDP?
Banks and Wall Street are being too clever, but given enough rope they will hang themselves. Why are stocks going down? Because the working man and woman can no longer afford to buy anything. Everyone is trying to make a killing off of the working man, and the working man is the one certainly being killed. He's broke!
The government says that inflation is near zero but we know that isn’t true. Look at food, gas, fees and licenses, the basics we can’t do without. Look at rentals. Look at property taxes and insurances that have not gone down even though housing is in the basement. Everybody’s trying to make a killing. My Social Security check has not gone up for two years but my expenses have increased 20%. That’s a fact.
Okay, pay minimum wage, cut benefits, cancel Social Security and Medicare, and see what happens. Do you hear that sound?
That’s tens of millions of wallets snapping shut.
*****************************************************************
E. Raymond Rock (anagarika eddie) is a meditation teacher at the DhammaRocksprings Theravada Buddhist Meditation Retreat Center: dhammarocksprings.org and author of “A Year to Enlightenment: http://www.amazon.com/Year-Enlightenment-Steps-Enriching-Living/dp/1564148912 His 33 years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk.
He lived at Wat Pah Nanachat under Ajahn Chah, at Wat Pah Baan Taad under Ajahn Maha Boowa, and at Wat Pah Daan Wi Weg under Ajahn Tui. He had been a postulant at Shasta Abbey, a Zen Buddhist monastery in northern California under Roshi Kennett; and a Theravada Buddhist anagarika at both Amaravati Monastery in the UK and Bodhinyanarama Monastery in New Zealand, both under Ajahn Sumedho. The author has meditated with the Korean Master Sueng Sahn Sunim; with Bhante Gunaratana at the Bhavana Society in West Virginia; and with the Tibetan Master Trungpa Rinpoche in Boulder, Colorado. He has also practiced at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, and the Zen Center in San Francisco.
Article submitted Saturday, August 20, 2011 & read 1507 times.
Leave your comments through Kerplop: