Monday 8 February ‘10 show notes

  • Guests:
    • Dan Gainor, Vice President and T. Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow at the Business and Media Institute.
    • Dale Robertson, Founder of the modern day tea party movement.
    • Professor Herb Boyd, FSTV special correspondent, activist, journalist, and teacher; Managing Editor of The Black World Today and author of 19 books…his most recent is “Pound for Pound—The Life and Times of Sugar Ray Robinson”.
  • Topics:
    • With a soldier dad waterboarding his 4 year old daughter, has America become a nation of brown shirts…or has the war come home?
    • Should Democrats force the GOP to vote on the privatization of Social Security?
    • Is the tea party movement the new brown shirts?
    • Is globalization killing the globe?
    • Perspective on the Haiti crisis…Herb reported for FSTV from Haiti immediately following the massive quake. He is heading back to Haiti tomorrow to report on progress.
  • Bumper Music:
  • Today’s newsletter has details of today’s guests and links to the major stories and alerts that Thom covered in the show, plus lots more. If you haven’t signed up for the free newsletter yet, please do. If you missed today’s newsletter, it is in the archive.
  • Quote: “Social Security…is not a dole or a device for giving everybody something for nothing. True Social Security must consist of rights which are earned rights — guaranteed by the law of the land.” — Harry S. Truman, August 13, 1945.
  • Welcome to our newest station, WWRL in New York, NY! We’re glad to be back in the big apple!.
  • Resolution: H. RES. 1077.
    Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives against severe changes to Social Security. (Introduced in House)
    HRES 1077 IH

     

    111th CONGRESS 

    2d Session 

    Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives against severe changes to Social Security.

     

     

    February 5, 2010

    Mr. LARSON of Connecticut (for himself, Ms. LINDA T. SANCHEZ of California, Mr. OBERSTAR, Mr. STARK, Mr. PASCRELL, Mr. HIGGINS, Mr. THOMPSON of California, Mr. FILNER, Ms. SCHWARTZ, Ms. SLAUGHTER, Ms. DELAURO, Mr. NEAL of Massachusetts, Mr. YARMUTH, Mr. DAVIS of Illinois, Ms. BERKLEY, Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts, Mr. SKELTON, Mr. CROWLEY, Mr. LEWIS of Georgia, Mr. POMEROY, Mr. LEVIN, Mr. KIND, Mr. OBEY, and Mr. WAXMAN) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Ways and Means

     

    Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives against severe changes to Social Security.

    Whereas Social Security has successfully and efficiently provided the foundation for Americans’ retirement security for generations and should be preserved for generations to come;

    Whereas for 6 in 10 seniors, Social Security provides the majority of their retirement income, and Social Security provides nearly all of the income received by four out of ten widows and other non-married seniors;

    Whereas Social Security’s essential protections for workers and their families cannot be matched by private savings, which are a complement to, but not a substitute for, Social Security’s guaranteed benefits;

    Whereas, as one such protection, Social Security provides a guaranteed benefit that one can never outlive, and unlike private savings or investments, is not subject to the ups and downs of the stock market;

    Whereas, as another such protection, Social Security benefits are indexed to inflation to maintain purchasing power over time, which is particularly important for women because they live longer on average than men, and the impact of inflation compounds over time;

    Whereas, as another such protection, Social Security provides family benefits, protecting not only the worker but dependent children and the surviving spouse;

    Whereas, as another such protection, Social Security not only provides a secure foundation of retirement, but it provides essential income to workers with severe disabilities and to survivors, representing, for a typical young family, a $413,000 disability insurance policy and a $430,000 life insurance policy;

    Whereas, as another such protection, Social Security’s progressive benefit formula ensures that those with the least opportunity to make supplemental provision for retirement receive the greatest degree of protection from Social Security;

    Whereas, for 75 years, Social Security has never been a day late or a dollar short;

    Whereas the American people made clear in 2005 that they did not seek severe change in Social Security when they resoundingly rejected President Bush’s attempt to privatize Social Security in favor of preserving a secure, guaranteed foundation of retirement income free from the risks and losses of the stock market;

    Whereas the current minority party plan for Social Security is even more extreme than the plan they advanced in 2005: (1) it cuts guaranteed Social Security retirement and survivor benefits for all workers, whether or not they wish to have a private account; (2) it diverts trillions from the Trust Fund into private accounts–eventually, four out of every ten dollars of Trust Fund contributions would be diverted to private accounts–threatening the ability of the Trust Funds to pay benefits to today’s seniors; (3) it increases Federal borrowing by $4,100,000,000,000; and (4) it subjects workers’ basic retirement security to market volatility and the risk of losses; and

    Whereas privatizing Social Security means benefit cuts, diversion of Trust Fund resources, subjecting individuals to market risk and losses, and increasing Federal borrowing by trillions of dollars: Now, therefore, be it

     

      Resolved, That the Congress should stand with the American people to reject severe changes to Social Security, including any and all attempts to privatize Social Security, and instead should commit to work bipartisanly to make common-sense adjustments to Social Security to strengthen it for future generations while preserving its guarantees of secure income and family protection in the event of a worker’s death, retirement, or severe disability.

     

    RESOLUTION 

    IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

    H. RES. 1077

  • Member of the day was Charles, who won a copy of “Walking Your Blues Away: How to Heal the Mind and Create Emotional Well-Being” for blogging:

    Privatizing Social Security is a Wall Street scam to bring about the largest transfer of funds from the poor to the rich. It will create a bubble like never seen.

    Think about it this way. There are a limited number of stocks currently traded by a small number of investors and investment groups. If you add in the Social Security funds into the mix, the price of the stocks held by the current investors will explode as an artificial demand is created. Those holding the stock will cash out with huge profits. The cost-to-earnings ratio of the highly inflated stocks will not be justifiable causing the bottom to fall out of the market and a panic to ensue as the new investors dump their stocks before they lose all value.

    Who do think will be there to scoop up all those devalued stock? And, who will be there to scoop up all the indigents left in the wake?

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