SOCIAL INSECURITY

I must be a socialist. I didn’t know I was one until quite recently. Maybe it was when the Bush administration started cutting veterans benefits. Or maybe it was when they handed the Medicare program to the drug industry and insurance companies. Perhaps it was when they made it harder for people to file for bankruptcy. Now they want to gut the Social Security program. I should have seen this coming.

In this “through the looking glass” black-is-white world of reverse Robin Hood, where stealing from the poor and giving to the rich is standard procedure, nothing should surprise me. How these people can sit there in front of the TV cameras with a straight face and say the outrageous things they are saying is just unbelievable! They must be laughing their asses off like fraternity brothers at a hazing in private. Like the old Soviet Union, they want to erase FDR’s new deal from the history books. It never happened, folks! There never was a time when we cared about those less fortunate or tried to give a hand up to the people at the bottom of the ladder. The ladder has been pulled up to the boys-only tree house of the Bush gang. All others need not apply.

Tax breaks are only for the wealthy and the mega-corporations that line the pockets of those in power. Health care is only for those who can afford it. A good education is only for those who can send their children to private schools. Retirement is only for those who have screwed the shareholders out of their hard-earned money. It’s the good-old-boy club – back with a vengeance. Back to the days of the robber barons and the sweatshops, of unregulated greed and rampant disregard for the people who do the real work and make the money for the corporations who then raid the pension and move offshore, where they pay no taxes but get tax breaks nonetheless.

It just pisses me off! Why are there not people in the streets, demanding some kind of accounting for these injustices? Where are our elected representatives? Who are they representing? Where is the press? Have they been bought out by the powers that be? I’m not one of these paranoid people who see conspiracies behind every tree. I’m not moving to Idaho and stocking up on weapons. I don’t see black helicopters over my house. I’m just a blue-collar union guy who worked in an auto plant for over thirty years and wants to live out my retirement in peace without worrying if my pension or insurance will still be there when I need it. I completed my part of the deal and now it’s time to collect the benefits. What about those just entering the workforce? What will be there for them? I wonder….