Posted on 05/24/2005 2:19:28 PM PDT by CHARLITE
In George Orwell’s classic book entitled 1984, one of the brainwashing pillars used by Big Brother was “ignorance is strength.” All citizens were constantly reminded of this principle to diminish their desire to know the truth. Adherence to this principle kept the government strong and the citizens weak.
The Democratic leadership in Congress has apparently adopted this philosophy as a strategy to defeat the idea of optional personal retirement accounts to restructure our dysfunctional Social Security system. Week after week their rhetoric attempts to deny, distort, distract, and deceive the public on the facts about President Bush’s optional accounts proposal.
The Democrats’ initial denial was that there is no crisis with the Social Security system. This was despite the fact that in 1998 former President Bill Clinton said that the system was in crisis. This was also despite the fact that the crisis has been approaching for sixty years, and in twelve more years there will be more money paid out than money collected from payroll taxes. And never mind the constant warnings by the Social Security Administration that the system is approaching a meltdown.
Their next tactic was to tell people that optional personal accounts are too risky for the unsophisticated working public. This is despite the irrefutable success their own Thrift Savings Plan, the indisputable success of the Galveston, TX Municipal Employees Retirement Plan, and the fact that since 1926 the average yearly rate of return of the stock market is over 7 percent.
The Democrats’ next blitz against optional personal accounts was to say they would not sit down with the president and Republicans to negotiate a solution until the president took optional personal accounts off the table. That’s ignorance code for “we only want to raise your taxes and reduce your benefits.”
The denial of all denials came from Black congressional Democrats, who said they were insulted that Bush pointed out the inherent bias against Black people due to significant differences in average life expectancy. Had I not heard several Black congressmen say that with my own ears I would not have believed they said it. Even Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), the Democrats “rising star,” said in an interview that he found it stunning that the president would use those indisputable facts. What is more stunning is that for decades no organization or so-called Black leader has shared this compelling fact with the public.
Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) recently stated on the Fox News Channel’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” that the accounts in the president’s plan could not be passed on to one’s heirs. Wrong again. It’s the current Social Security system that does not allow inheritability. The president has repeatedly highlighted inheritability as a big advantage of optional personal accounts, and that feature is included in all three versions of legislation already introduced in Congress.
The ignorance strategy hit another high when Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) recently issued a brochure critical of the president’s proposal. The brochure went beyond the usual distortions to outright lies. I know it is not politically correct to say a member of Congress lied, but the truth police seem to be missing in action.
Maloney printed in her brochure that guaranteed benefits would be cut under the president’s plan. Not true. She said the president’s proposal was not optional. Not true. She also said the optional personal accounts were not transferable to your heirs if you die before the funds are exhausted. Not true again. These statements are not just little white political lies. They are big fat political whoppers!
Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), who I deeply respect for his contributions to the civil rights movement, has said that the Democrats are winning the Social Security debate. Unfortunately, the Democrats are not debating solutions. They are digging in their heels to maintain the status quo by keeping a lot of people confused and ignorant of the facts.
Integrity used to be a virtue shared by most members of Congress. Integrity is now blatantly ignored for purely partisan political purposes. Most people elected to Congress want to solve problems. But too many members are now content to let the people suffer for the sake of political obstructionism and the next election.
As former Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota found out in the last election, voters are not as dumb as Democrats think. It just takes some people longer to recover from years of liberal abuse. Some will never recover, but a vocal and persistent public armed with the right information can force Congress to enact aggressive policy solutions.
As Thomas Jefferson said, “When people have the right information they will make the right decisions.” Democrats will soon learn that promoting ignorance is a losing strategy.
the=them
Of course their strategy is to keep the voters in the dark. The vast majority of 'Rats could NEVER be elected if they let on what they really believed.
Doesn't somebody have a Herman Cain ping list?
This is why Democrats support the dumbing-down of our public education system. The dumber the American people, the more likely they'll vote for Democrats.
Exactly!
So...let me see if I have this right. The Republicans control the executive branch and have a majority in the House and Senate. The president has gone on an extended PR campaign to let the American public know all about the virtues of his plan. If even all of the Republicans supported this plan, it would be a slam dunk. And yet, it just keeps losing favor with the public...and somehow that is the Democrats' fault? I had no idea they had that kind of power.
Have you seen the ads from MoveOn ..??
What??? You never heard of Slick Willy's pet project: The Dumbing Down of America?
Look...this plan doesn't require any democratic disinformation to fail with America. Nobody denies that you're going to have to borrow billions and billions of dollars to shore up an entitlement program. And the degree to which it shores it up isn't all that impressive.
So what you have is a president who belongs to the party of responsible spending and small government giving huge tax cuts to the rich and borrowing more money than most of us can count to make the government bigger. Meanwhile, anyone earning a living wage eats some moderate benefits reductions to make sure the poor still get their benefits. And this is supposed to look good to who exactly?
"HarryManback"?
Is that like 'too much nosehair'?
Homeschool...
"Look...this plan doesn't require any democratic disinformation to fail with America."
Then you admit it is true. (I know it is because I've read it.)
"giving huge tax cuts to the rich"
How else were we going to get out of our slump after 9/11 changed our economics? He did it to create jobs!!!!
"and borrowing more money than most of us can count to make the government bigger."
The only part of BIG government that, in my opinion, was non-essential is Homeland Security. Most of the rest of it was for the war effort.
And while we're on the subject - what about all the government waste? The Fleecing of America? The pet projects of individual politicians for their home state?
It's also been shown that we could save about $68 billion IF we curbed illegal aliens.
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