Gene Lyons on Barack Obama's teachable moment

[mooseandsquirrel]

snip

What Obama's got here is a teachable moment, an opportunity to apply his formidable pedagogical skills. He's already said that reforming Social Security is "easy"-simply remove the cap on payroll taxes on persons earning over $200,000 a year and the program can be selfsustaining indefinitely. Compromise? Maybe raise age limits slightly to give moderate Republicans cover.

snip

http://moose-and-squirrel.com/gene/gene.html

m&s

[bemildred]

1. It's only hard if you forbid anything that might work. nt

[Peace Patriot]

2. Here's another idea. Cut the 'Defense' budget in half and STOP BORROWING

FROM THE SOCIAL SECURITY FUND to pay for unjust, hideous, genocidal war.

You don't have to take it out of the hides of people who have paid into it all their lives. There is nothing wrong with this Fund that fiscal responsibility and peace wouldn't cure.

The Bushwhacks have been borrowing against the Social Security Fund--and also against all government pension funds--to pay for their corporate oil war and for lavish war profiteering and police state profiteering. Our 'Defense'--if it is to be truly a defense, and not an aggressive corporate war machine--can be more than adequately handled by halving the Defense budget and cutting out the profiteers. Then, guess what? We would have plenty of money to keep Social Security solvent, implement universal health and rebuild our Bushwhack-destroyed country.

[Enthusiast]

3. Peace Patriot, I like your idea best

I mean, what possible justification is there for outspending the entire rest of the combined world on defense? It is a fucking joke and the joke is on us. This military spending level is on par with pre-WWII Nazi Germany in scope. Eventually the fascists will gain control of the country again. They could use another 9/11 type event, real of imagined, to drag us into a world conflagration.