Bush Declares Ownership Society - Tells Convention He's Ordered Invasion of Social Security Trust Fund
by Greg Palast, The Observer

New York - Of all the bone-headed, whacky, breathtakingly threatening schemes George W. Bush [tried] to sell us in his acceptance speech [Thursday night] is something he and his handlers call, "the Ownership Society." Sounds cool, "ownership." Everyone gets a piece of the action. Everyone's a winner as the economy zooms. All boats rise.

Sure. Behind the hooray-for-free-enterprise crapola is that dog-eared game-plan to siphon off Social Security revenues to pay for making Bush's tax cuts for the rich permanent.

Here's what Bush has in mind. Social Security is an insurance plan. You pay in, you get back. But it's hard to get your money back when there's a war where the Clinton surplus used to be. It's not the war on terror, or the war in Iraq, though Lord knows those have cost us a bundle with nothing to show for all the lost loot. I'm talking about the class war that Dubya and his Dick Cheney have waged on the average working person.

We're talking an economic Pearl Harbor here. While firemen and policemen went running into falling buildings, the Bushmen were preparing to relieve some gazillionaires, such as say, the Bush family, of the need to pay the taxes that the rest of us pay. Work as a teacher, you pay Social Security and income taxes on every darn penny. Sit on your yacht and speculate in the stock market casino and you are off the hook on taxes on the "capital gains."

Bill Clinton proposed putting his big surpluses into a Social Security "lock-box" for that predictable rainy day. But [Thursday night], Bush instead propose[d] to give the stock-options class a boost by lopping off a chunk of Social Security insurance revenue for gambling in the stock market. He had this same idea in 2000. If he'd had his way on his inauguration day, the average "owner" in America, investing in the stock market, would be 7% poorer, many flat busted. Some "security." Happy elderly "owners" would be hunting for lunch in the garbage cans under Madison Square Garden.

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