Ratcheting up the anti-Social Security/anti-Medicare propaganda

[marmar]

Bowles Says Entitlements May Turn U.S. Into ‘Second-Rate Power’
By David Mildenberg


March 9 (Bloomberg) -- Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of the commission on U.S. deficit reduction, said costs of entitlement programs such as Social Security may turn the nation into a “second-rate power” if costs aren’t reduced.

“We’re going to mess with Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security because if you take those off the table, you can’t get there,” Bowles, 64, said today in a speech to North Carolina bankers. “If we don’t make those choices, America is going to be a second-rate power and I don’t mean in 50 years. I mean in my lifetime.”


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aGIN8ZpPJxlE&pos=9

[gratuitous]

1. Raising taxes is obviously out of the question

After all, if you tax the overrich winners of our society, they'll lose all incentive to be overrich, and then what will we do? America is to be run by and for the benefit of the wealthiest, and if the poor rabble start getting a little taste of the fabulous wealth they create, what's going to be left for the robber barons? Better to cut "entitlements" while shoveling the Treasury into the hands of the greediest motherfuckers our country can produce.

[applegrove]

8. Here here!

[Cleita]

2. Shows how out of touch these idiots are with what is going on around them.

The USA already is a second rate power. China is overtaking us and they are doing it with implementing social programs, the latest is real universal health care, not the corporate bill Congress just threw up for us. They want the Chinese to start buying their domestic products because they know our economy is going to crash and we aren't going to be able to buy their stuff anymore. So since the Chinese save their money for health care, they want them to be secure that health care will be available to them so that they spend that money instead. Thom Hartmann laid it all out on his program this morning and I'm sure will have podcasts and transcripts available in time.

[damntexdem]

3. We don't need these second-rate minds to tell us to sacrifice ourselves.

The U.S. is already a second-rate power with regard to social spending on its citizens -- these RW nutcases want to take us to 3rd world status in that regard.

Eliminate the FICA income cap and Social Security will be fiscally secure for many decades.

Truly reform healthcare and Medicare and Medicaid can be made fiscally solvent.

These idiots attack the MOST-EFFICIENT means of covering healthcare, while private for-profit insurers destroy our healthcare system.

[DJ13]

4. Thanks Obama for another conservative idea

[Marr]

5. Amazing, isn't it?

Can't raise taxes on the wealthy or on corporations. Can't reduce the wasted money that rushes into the war industry. We'll cut your entitlements. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Just offer up your children to help us secure our foreign investments, then die off quietly, please. Thank you.

[inna]

6. Fricking unbelievable. Thank you, Obama.

x(

[Echo In Light]

7. k/r

[leftstreet]

9. What's wrong with being a 'second-rate power?'

:shrug:

[G_j]

10. & he is telling this to banksters.. nt

[glitch]

11. Not theirs to mess with, unless they want to commit fraud.

Entitlement ain't the bad word they'd like us to believe it is.

It actually means something legally.

[BrklynLiberal]

12. Define "second rate power"... In exactly what areas is the US leading the world?

Anything to be admired or emulated? Not so much.

[bvar22]

13. We will see their Winged Monkeys popping up on DU.

Some are already here.

[slipslidingaway]

14. knr nt

[QC]

15. I feel so hopeful! n/t

[WCGreen]

16. How about not trying to be all that we can be militarily just to ensure

the economic prosperity of exporting nations...

[Greyhound]

17. Cutting the corporate welfare war machine budget and forcing the uber-rich to pay their fair share

are also out of the question.

So now it comes down to this; If nothing is done the whole scheme collapses and they lose it all, while we that have little to nothing already deal with this reality every day. The parasites have no cards, it's a bluff.

We don't need them and would be far better off without them, but they are utterly dependent on us.

[Hannah Bell]

18. what a tool. second-rate to what? to countries that let people starve in their old age?

second-rate to countries that let poor people die of treatable diseases?

[jeanpalmer]

19. He and Alan Simpson

what a pair. A Wall St. banker and an ultra right winger. It's pretty clear where they're headed with this.