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WHO RULES: THE ISRAEL LOBBY
OR UNCLE SAM?
The answer
at last! Uri Avnery, former Knesset member, assesses the Lobby's
power. "If the Israeli government wanted a law tomorrow
annulling the 10 Commandments, 95 U.S. Senators (at least) would
sign the bill forthwith." But, yes, in the end the dog wags
the tail.Fifty
years ago Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" blew the cobwebs
out of millions of young minds and drove a stake through the
heart of Eisenhower's America. Lenni Brenner remembers Ginsberg
in the East Village.Dr Mengele died in exile, in disguise. Dr Ishii
died rich and recognized, in his own Tokyo home. Christopher
Reed on Japanese WW2 medical tortures and how the U.S. covered
them up.CounterPunch
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Now!
An administration that can't
be bothered to look two days ahead to plan for the landfall of
a hurricane in New Orleans, that can't be bothered to look three
months ahead to plan for the eventuality of conquering and having
to run a country, that isn't worried about the inevitable crisis
that will be caused for the dollar by running up huge fiscal
deficits, that refuses to take steps to curb US fuel consumption
despite the clear knowledge that the price of imported oil will
only be going up-this almost congenitally unprepared and unforward-looking
group of national leaders--is pushing the same tired old scare
story again about Social Security funds "running out"
in 2040.
The new alarm makes the scary
claim that the funds are even worse than we wer told a year ago,
and instead of running out in 2041, will run out in 2040. Worse
yet, they say, the Medicare fund will be bankrupt in 2018, instead
of 2020!
Woe are us! What will we do!
Does anyone really take this
gang seriously?
2040 is 34 years from now.
As a Baby Boomer-one of that demographic cohort that is routinely
blamed for causing the Social Security crisis by being too many,
by being the pig in the python-I look at this and think, well,
in 34 years, I'll be 91, if I'm lucky. If I'm not lucky, and
I'm not around, so much the better for the Social Security fund.
The point is, this is so far
in the future, anything could happen. Thirty-four years ago,
Nixon was running for re-election and bugging the Watergate Hotel,
the war in Vietnam looked like it would never end, Russia seemed
like an implacable enemy and we still had all the Beetles. Who
would have thought we'd be where we are today?
In fact, there are much bigger
things to worry about than how well the Trust Fund will hold
up over that length of time. Hell, the whole eastern seaboard
may be underwater by then. My house north of Philadelphia could
be ocean-front property, which would be great for my heirs.
You certainly don't hear Bush
and Cheney, and the Republican scaremongers in the Congress,
calling for drastic action to deal with the global warming threat,
which will be manifesting itself in a big way by 2040. No, they're
worried about Social Security.
If this were a government that
was into dealing with future crises, and with planning
ahead, these same people wouldn't be bankrupting the country
by blowing hundreds of billions of dollars blowing things up
in Iraq while cutting trillions of dollars in taxes for the rich.
What, after all, is the point
in worrying about the fiscal health of the Social Security Trust
Fund when you're bankrupting the whole damned country? It's a
little like parents who take out a balloon mortgage to buy a
McMansion for half a million bucks and then complain that they
don't have the money to send their kid to college.
And of course, we have to think
about another point. Social Security is basically a program that
takes care of the working poor. It isn't a program for the well
off, for whom those monthly checks are just chump change anyhow.
And when else, besides this Social Security thing, have you heard
Republicans acting concerned about a welfare program, except
to complain that it's too wasteful?
So what's up here? Why all
the words of "concern"?
The answer is that the Republicans'
paymasters-the business leaders-don't like Social Security. They
absolutely loath paying that 7.5 percent matching contribution
every month into to their employees' Social Security accounts.
And the way they can get out of that annoying bill is to get
people so worried about the future of Social Security that they
start calling for an end to the program, in favor of privatized
investing.
Of course, they also are listening
to another special interest group-the banking industry and the
investment banking industry-which want to get their hands on
trillions of dollars of Social Security money by having the public
switch out of a government program and into private accounts,
which they would "handle" for a fee of course.
Me, I don't worry about Social
Security. I start getting my checks in eight years, and I'm not
the slightest bit worried about whether the money will be there.
The reason for my confidence is numbers, but not financial numbers.
Population numbers. My fellow Boomers and I are going to be the
most powerful damned senior lobby you've ever seen. We'll way
outnumber today's grayhairs, and look at their political clout
already.
We're going to get what we
need out of Congress, even if it means getting money out of the
general treasury.
It's appropriate that the administration
should come out with this latest scare-mongering story about
Social Security on May 1. After all, May 1 is coming to be symbolic
of all that's wrong and fraudulent about Bush the Lesser's whole
presidency. It's the day he pretended to be a Top Gun pilot,
and pretended that his splendid little war was over, in 2003.
It's also the day his whole war-mongering fraud was exposed by
the Downing Street memo, revealed by the Times in London in 2005.
Now it's also the day he tried
to revive his campaign to end Social Security by scaring the
public into thinking that the system was going bankrupt.
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
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