In 1983, the strategy for destroying Social Security was clearly expressed in the Cato Journal (“Achieving a Leninist Strategy,” vol.3, no. 2).  The Cato Journal is the pseudo-scholarly publication of the Cato Institute, which is a Koch funded Washington, DC “think tank.”  The article, by Stuart Butler and Peter Germanis, recognized that “a firm coalition behind the present Social Security system” had been politically effective.  They concluded, therefore, that it is necessary for opponents to, “begin to divide this coalition and cast doubt on the picture of reality it presents to the public” (page 548).

Butler and Germanis stated that they must also construct a coalition “that will gain directly from implementation” of a plan to privatize Social Security.  They suggested that such institutions as banks and insurance companies, seeing the profits to be made from privatization would be likely allies (page 549).

Recognizing that “the elderly represent a very powerful and vocal interest group,” (page 549), the authors set forth their second main strategic element, which, as they stated, “involves what one might crudely call guerrilla warfare against both the current Social Security system and the coalition that supports it” (page 552).  And indeed, for nearly three decades, a “guerrilla war” has been waged on the Social Security system and the coalition that works to protect and maintain it. 

This war has been waged primarily with misinformation about the nature of the Social Security system and its impact on the fiscal problems of the federal government.  The Social Security program has amassed a 2.5 trillion dollar surplus and is adequately funded, without any adjustment, until 2037, and, with a small amount of tweaking, into the foreseeable future after 2037.  The misinformation, perhaps disinformation, however, is that Social Security is “going bankrupt” and is putting a strain on federal finances; i.e., it is a cause of the federal deficit.  This is absolutely false.  In covering a deficit caused primarily by wars and ill advised upper income tax cuts, the federal government is borrowing from the Social Security Trust Fund.

Has this guerrilla war on the elderly and the successful and well run Social Security safety net program been effective?  Yes.  The mainstream press overwhelmingly takes its cues from the anti-Social Security forces and passes along the misinformation disseminated by conservative think tanks.  Just today, a front page New York Times article on the deficit primarily blamed Social Security and Medicare for the current budget mess in Washington (“Divide on Deficit Likely to Grow After Election,” 10/26/2010).

The author, Jackie Calmes displayed her ignorance by blaming “an unsustainable combination of fast-growing entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare and inadequate tax revenues” for the current budget deficit.  As usual, the “baby boomer” generation is scapegoated in this article.  Ms Calmes quoted David Cote, the chief executive of Honeywell International, and a known anti-Social Security hardliner on President Obama’s deficit reduction commission.  Here is what he had to say: “the thing that shocked me was that the debt crisis had been predicted for decades because of the costs of federal benefits for the baby boom generation.”

This imaginary entitlement crisis caused by the baby boomers is never questioned.  An objective, informed challenge to this slur on people in a single age range, is never presented in the New York Times, on PBS, NPR, or in any other mainstream media.  The maligned group of people born between 1946 and 1964 (and others) has paid enough into the Social Security system to pay benefits to the generation preceding them as well as enough to take care of themselves until 2037.  They are now scapegoated for one war costing several trillion dollars, another war running $100 billion per year (in its ninth year), tax cuts for the wealthy costing another $1 trillion over the next decade, and an on-going defense expenditure of $1.1 trillion per year.

This is how well-funded guerrilla war is supposed to work – especially when there is very little push back by powerful media entities.  Social Security, Medicare and the selfish baby boomers as causes of impending fiscal doom is accepted as nothing less than a truism in the mainstream press. 

The good news is that a network for taking on the anti-Social Security guerrillas is forming and forming rapidly.  For instance, labor unions, the NAACP, Older Women’s League, NOW, Gray Panthers, and hundreds of other organizations are coming together into one coalition know as “Strengthen Our Social Security.”  Check it out at http://strengthensocialsecurity.org/.  Local and regional coalitions are also coming together.  In Kansas and Missouri, the “Save Our Social Security (SOS)” coalition is coming together.  The http://sostakeapledge.com  website will be up in a matter of days.

Through billions of dollars poured into elections,  funding of political front groups, and fomenting of Tea Party protests,  Bill and David Koch are attempting to weaken democracy in the United States.  If you don’t know much about the modus operandi of these two fanatical right wingers, I suggest that you spend some time reading Jane Mayer’s article “Covert Operation” in the August 30, 2010 issue of the New Yorker. 

I appreciate articles exposing the Koch’s shenanigans and encourage anyone to write them and send them to The Tallgrass Activist.  People should know what Bill and David Koch are up to and how they go about their sleazy political business. 

The following letter by Clark Coan appeared in the Lawrence Journal World:

 Lawrence, KS

 September 26, 2010

Billionaire Charles Koch reportedly runs privately held Koch Industries as an autocrat, so a case can be made that he is responsible for any malfeasance.

In 2000, a federal grand jury issued a 97-count indictment against the company for knowingly releasing 91 metric tons of benzene and concealing this crime from regulators. The company was subject to $350 million in fines, and four Koch employees faced a combined total of 100 years in prison and $50 million in fines.

Also in 2000, the Justice Department imposed a $30 million fine against Koch, the largest civil penalty ever levied against a company under federal environmental laws. It was determined that Koch was negligent in causing more than 300 oil spills that polluted waters in six states, including Kansas.

A federal jury issued a verdict in 1999 that Koch Industries had, “purposely falsified oil measurements on federal and Indian lands, a practice that allowed it to collect more oil than it paid for. Several Koch employees testified that they were instructed to alter their measurements. Koch Industries admitted it received about $170 million worth of oil it didn’t pay for.”

To paraphrase Balzac, “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.” Maybe several crimes.

For the second year in a row, there will be no cost of living adjustment for Social Security beneficiaries.  We are talking zip, de nada, zilch, nothing.  I have to wonder how many people realize that this is not based on any rational, scientific framework for calculating the actual growth of the economy and real increase in the cost of living.

The truth is that manipulation of inflation measures is done through voodoo economics for the purpose of political expediency.  As Kevin Phillips discussed in Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism, the GOP congress, in the mid-1990s, appointed the Boskin Commission under Michael Boskin, former head of George H. W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors.  This commission set about to scrap the market basket of goods and services utilized to calculate inflation up to that time and replace it with something that would result in the gradual reduction of Social Security benefits.

On page 82 and 83 of Bad Money, Phillips says the following:

“Social Security payments were not vulnerable to frontal political and legislative attack, so attention shifted to the CPI determination of how much retiree payments would rise each year.  Greenspan and Boskin charged that the CPI overstated inflation by as much as 1.5 percent, and the Boskin Commission recommended a set of revisions to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which generally concurred.  These changes were implemented between 1997 and 1999, while the public and the politicians were preoccupied by bull market euphoria and the actions in Congress to impeach Bill Clinton.”

It is also worthwhile for readers to check out the website of John Williams, a respected economist, and expert regarding the CPI (http://www.shadowstats.com/).  According to Williams, the methodology scrapped and replaced with the Boskin Commission’s recommendation, would have resulted in an official inflation rate of 5 to 7 percent between 2005 and 2007 instead of the BLS determined 2 to 4 percent.

Thanks to the Republicans’ mean-spiritedness and the Democrats’ passivity, cluelessness, and compliance, for the past 20 years, fixed income retirees, workers with COLA clauses in their contracts, and average Americans in general, have been cheated by having their incomes suppressed by the power-elite’s cynical, dishonest manipulation of economic analyses.  Now Democrats are in charge of both houses of Congress and the White House and what do they do right before an election? 

They whack the elderly by increasing deductions for Medicare from Social Security checks while claiming zero inflation.  Brilliant Democrats!  Absolutely brilliant!  Brilliant, that is, if you are trying to lose elections by unjustly and unnecessarily hurting elderly voters a few weeks before an election.

It looks like Democrats are anxious to hand Congress and the Presidency back to the Republicans.  The party in charge of both houses of Congress and the Presidency could force the BLS to make a fair and accurate determination of the inflation rate.  But they choose not to do that. So, to relieve themselves of power, all they have to do is maintain their deluded belief that seniors are stupid enough to believe that the inflation rate is zero while at the same time their health care costs are increasing.