“The first of the 77 million-strong
Baby Boom generation will begin to retire in just four years. The
economic consequences of this fact -- as scary as they are foreseeable
-- are all but ignored by President Bush and Democratic challenger
John Kerry, who discuss just about everything but the biggest fiscal
challenge of modern times. Yet whoever wins the 2004 race will become
the first U.S. president to confront what sober-minded experts across
the political spectrum describe as an impending "fiscal catastrophe"
lying right around the corner. Astronomical federal debt, coming due
as the Baby Boom generation collects Medicare, Medicaid and Social
Security, is enormous enough to swamp the promises both candidates are
making to voters, whether for tax cuts, health care, 40,000 more
troops or anything else.”- Carolyn Lochhead San Francisco Chronicle
09-12-04
The campaign strategists for the Republican Party and their corporate media cohorts have successfully framed the focus of this campaign away from Bush’s abysmal record as President and his unfitness as a leader to whether or not John Kerry actually earned his medals during the Vietnam War?! John Kerry on the other hand who is about as charismatic as a dried up dishrag is conducting a campaign designed by his handlers to lose. Kerry was the candidate the plutocrats who run the country felt would extinguish the peculating anti-war, anti-Bush movement. So neither Bush nor Kerry is saying anything that will alter the present course this nation is on. Neither Bush nor Kerry offer any real change in the status quo. Neither one of them will replace lies with truth, war with peace or turn this nation away from it’s present course of spiritual and socio-economic ruin. AmeriKKKa is broke, morally as well as financially. The ruling elites have gone totally mad and their policies will inevitably lead to the implosion and collapse of AmeriKKKa. In their depravity, they’ve failed to realize the universal Law of Karma is always at work. You reap what you sow. Their imperialist bloodlust is sucking hundreds of billions of dollars we don’t have into the sinkholes of Iraq and Afghanistan and their policies at home will result in the serfdom of present and future generations.
When George W. Bush was sworn in as president he inherited a reported “surplus” of $236 billion dollars. His embrace of the discredited fiscal policies of Reaganomics, tax cuts for the very rich coupled with unrestrained spending, increased corporate welfare and out and out corruption have put this nation in a $420 billion federal deficit. You don’t have to be a PhD in economics to realize when you spend more than you earn you incur debt. This is the situation many AmeriKKKans find themselves in trying to maintain their present lifestyle amidst shriveling economic growth. Keeping up with Madison Avene and the proverbial Jones will eventually put us all in the debtor’s prison of financial insolvency. Bankruptcies and foreclosures are at an all time high, rivaling numbers during the Great Depression! This is the predicament George Bush has put the nation in. Neither he nor his Democratic opponent are addressing these issues. For the most part the corporate owned media remains silent on the depth and extent of the problems. Every now and then the editors will allow a journalist will tell his or her readers what is really going on. Recently Carolyn Lochhead wrote an article in the San Francisco Chronicle pointing out neither candidate was addressing the pivotal issue or our time, fiscal mismanagement. “Traditional budget measures used by politicians and the press give what Walker and many others call a highly misleading view of the U.S. debt. These focus on publicly held debt already incurred, now at $4.5 trillion, or 10-year budget forecasts like the one released last week by the Congressional Budget Office showing a record $422 billion deficit this year and a $2.3 trillion 10- year deficit. But these figures, worrisome enough, are deceptive because they ignore future liabilities such as Social Security and Medicare payments to the Baby Boomers. An array of government and private analysts put the actual U.S. ‘fiscal gap,’ which means all future receipts minus all future obligations, at $40 trillion (Government Accountability Office) to $72 trillion (Social Security Board of Trustees). These are not sums, but present-value figures, heavily discounted to show in today's dollars what it would cost to pay off the debt immediately. The International Monetary Fund estimates the gap at $47 trillion, the Brookings Institution at $60 trillion.”- San Francisco Chronicle 09-12-04 If this wasn’t alarming enough neither Bush nor Kerry are talking about the potential for further crisis as stock market volatility, poor returns on investment and low interest rates over the last few years has wrecked havoc with pension plans; many who have deliberately been underfunded or raided to stave off monetary shortfalls or in the case of public employee pensions increasing state and local budget deficits . So not only do we have escalating federal debt with no end in sight which is putting Social Security and other “entitlement programs” at risk; but pension security is also at risk. California Congressman George Miller a Democrat is one of the few legislators talking about the severity of national pension plan risk. “The crisis we address today is not new. In fact, for over a year, the Bush Administration repeatedly ignored our urgent requests to wake up to the serious problem of pension under-funding. I wrote to the Administration in July of 2002 to take action when pension deficits skyrocketed from $26 billion to over $100 billion. It failed to act. Now, over a year later, the problem is substantially worse. The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation now says that pension plans are $400 billion in the red nationally – the largest liability in history – and the PBGC itself is reporting a $5.7 billion deficit as of July 31.” The PBGC Congressman Miller refers to is the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation a quasi-government agency created to insure solvency of the nation’s pension plans. The PBGC itself is experiencing escalating deficits! Meaning there is no money to sure up shaky pension funds which become even shakier each time a company decides to pay its stockholders rather than adequately fund their pension program or a state raids it’s public employee pension funds to balance their budget. The situation is further acerbated when a company like Enron goes belly up. Do you hear Bush or Kerry talking about any of this? Of course not, what we have to ask ourselves is, why aren’t these issues a priority in their campaigns?!
No matter how old you are, these are critical issues. Older folks are worried about future financial security: will Social Security still exist, is my pension safe and secure? Young people have a stake in this because they will be forced to bare the costs of these massive deficits, the increased costs of Medicare, Social Security, the pension bail outs the bail outs of the airline industry and the steel industry as well as the perpetual wars the Neo-Cons will wage. Keep in mind we are still paying for and will continue to pay years into the future for the Savings and Loan scandals of the 1980's. Most people are unaware President Bush’s father and his two brothers, Neil and Jeb took part in these billion dollar rip offs and never spent a day in jail! Yes the current war is a major issue but Kerry’s manipulated rise to become the Democratic candidate insured the anti-war and anti-Bush movements would be effectively sabotaged. His lackluster “me too Republican lite” campaign strategy is proof of that. We know the mess Bush has made of things. If he is re-elected things will get worse. The question is, what extraordinary measures are ordinary folks prepared to take to alter the disastrous course this nation is on?
The campaign strategists for the Republican Party and their corporate media cohorts have successfully framed the focus of this campaign away from Bush’s abysmal record as President and his unfitness as a leader to whether or not John Kerry actually earned his medals during the Vietnam War?! John Kerry on the other hand who is about as charismatic as a dried up dishrag is conducting a campaign designed by his handlers to lose. Kerry was the candidate the plutocrats who run the country felt would extinguish the peculating anti-war, anti-Bush movement. So neither Bush nor Kerry is saying anything that will alter the present course this nation is on. Neither Bush nor Kerry offer any real change in the status quo. Neither one of them will replace lies with truth, war with peace or turn this nation away from it’s present course of spiritual and socio-economic ruin. AmeriKKKa is broke, morally as well as financially. The ruling elites have gone totally mad and their policies will inevitably lead to the implosion and collapse of AmeriKKKa. In their depravity, they’ve failed to realize the universal Law of Karma is always at work. You reap what you sow. Their imperialist bloodlust is sucking hundreds of billions of dollars we don’t have into the sinkholes of Iraq and Afghanistan and their policies at home will result in the serfdom of present and future generations.
When George W. Bush was sworn in as president he inherited a reported “surplus” of $236 billion dollars. His embrace of the discredited fiscal policies of Reaganomics, tax cuts for the very rich coupled with unrestrained spending, increased corporate welfare and out and out corruption have put this nation in a $420 billion federal deficit. You don’t have to be a PhD in economics to realize when you spend more than you earn you incur debt. This is the situation many AmeriKKKans find themselves in trying to maintain their present lifestyle amidst shriveling economic growth. Keeping up with Madison Avene and the proverbial Jones will eventually put us all in the debtor’s prison of financial insolvency. Bankruptcies and foreclosures are at an all time high, rivaling numbers during the Great Depression! This is the predicament George Bush has put the nation in. Neither he nor his Democratic opponent are addressing these issues. For the most part the corporate owned media remains silent on the depth and extent of the problems. Every now and then the editors will allow a journalist will tell his or her readers what is really going on. Recently Carolyn Lochhead wrote an article in the San Francisco Chronicle pointing out neither candidate was addressing the pivotal issue or our time, fiscal mismanagement. “Traditional budget measures used by politicians and the press give what Walker and many others call a highly misleading view of the U.S. debt. These focus on publicly held debt already incurred, now at $4.5 trillion, or 10-year budget forecasts like the one released last week by the Congressional Budget Office showing a record $422 billion deficit this year and a $2.3 trillion 10- year deficit. But these figures, worrisome enough, are deceptive because they ignore future liabilities such as Social Security and Medicare payments to the Baby Boomers. An array of government and private analysts put the actual U.S. ‘fiscal gap,’ which means all future receipts minus all future obligations, at $40 trillion (Government Accountability Office) to $72 trillion (Social Security Board of Trustees). These are not sums, but present-value figures, heavily discounted to show in today's dollars what it would cost to pay off the debt immediately. The International Monetary Fund estimates the gap at $47 trillion, the Brookings Institution at $60 trillion.”- San Francisco Chronicle 09-12-04 If this wasn’t alarming enough neither Bush nor Kerry are talking about the potential for further crisis as stock market volatility, poor returns on investment and low interest rates over the last few years has wrecked havoc with pension plans; many who have deliberately been underfunded or raided to stave off monetary shortfalls or in the case of public employee pensions increasing state and local budget deficits . So not only do we have escalating federal debt with no end in sight which is putting Social Security and other “entitlement programs” at risk; but pension security is also at risk. California Congressman George Miller a Democrat is one of the few legislators talking about the severity of national pension plan risk. “The crisis we address today is not new. In fact, for over a year, the Bush Administration repeatedly ignored our urgent requests to wake up to the serious problem of pension under-funding. I wrote to the Administration in July of 2002 to take action when pension deficits skyrocketed from $26 billion to over $100 billion. It failed to act. Now, over a year later, the problem is substantially worse. The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation now says that pension plans are $400 billion in the red nationally – the largest liability in history – and the PBGC itself is reporting a $5.7 billion deficit as of July 31.” The PBGC Congressman Miller refers to is the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation a quasi-government agency created to insure solvency of the nation’s pension plans. The PBGC itself is experiencing escalating deficits! Meaning there is no money to sure up shaky pension funds which become even shakier each time a company decides to pay its stockholders rather than adequately fund their pension program or a state raids it’s public employee pension funds to balance their budget. The situation is further acerbated when a company like Enron goes belly up. Do you hear Bush or Kerry talking about any of this? Of course not, what we have to ask ourselves is, why aren’t these issues a priority in their campaigns?!
No matter how old you are, these are critical issues. Older folks are worried about future financial security: will Social Security still exist, is my pension safe and secure? Young people have a stake in this because they will be forced to bare the costs of these massive deficits, the increased costs of Medicare, Social Security, the pension bail outs the bail outs of the airline industry and the steel industry as well as the perpetual wars the Neo-Cons will wage. Keep in mind we are still paying for and will continue to pay years into the future for the Savings and Loan scandals of the 1980's. Most people are unaware President Bush’s father and his two brothers, Neil and Jeb took part in these billion dollar rip offs and never spent a day in jail! Yes the current war is a major issue but Kerry’s manipulated rise to become the Democratic candidate insured the anti-war and anti-Bush movements would be effectively sabotaged. His lackluster “me too Republican lite” campaign strategy is proof of that. We know the mess Bush has made of things. If he is re-elected things will get worse. The question is, what extraordinary measures are ordinary folks prepared to take to alter the disastrous course this nation is on?
Junious Ricardo Stanton produce and host a Internet radio programs titled The Digital Underground which airs live on Sundays from 12 pm- 2 pm eastern standard time on NewBlackCity.com Junious is also featured on Blakeradio.com with the program titled The Cyberspace Sanctuary A Safe House For Your Mind Harambee Radio.com and BlackMic Radio Relays The Digital Underground on Sundays tune into these powerful broadcasts and continue to support those who support you!!
