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["Toni Hawryluk" <tonihawr AT msn.com>]

>I thought a number of right-wing Christian groups were helping these 
>women??? I could be wrong, as I often am. Marie

"...right-wing Christian groups" are not
arresting anybody/rescuing anybody,
now are they ? Nor is the U.N. 

And 'your elected representatives' send 
your tax-money backed up by the same 
thing your money is backed by - have you
read what's printed on it ? And really
*thought* about who is 'minding the store'
and *how* ? while other countries are
holding the strings on U.S. debt. Which
is "growing by leaps and bounds" ....
>From genegerue AT ruralize.com  Sat Dec 11 09:46:41 2004
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Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:46:09 -0700
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From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
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Subject: [Homestead] Social Security 2005
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This is on the other side of the question:

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Real Reform for Social Security

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: December 11, 2004

Before we get lost in the policy details, let's be clear about what this
Social Security reform debate is really about. It's about the market.
People who instinctively trust the markets support the Bush reform ideas,
and people who are suspicious oppose them.

The people setting the tone for the opposition to the Bush Social Security
effort depict the financial markets as huge, organized scams where the rich
prey upon the weak. Their phrases are already familiar: a risky scheme,
Enron accounting, a gift to the securities industry, greedy speculators
preying upon Grandma's pension.

Gone is the day when President Clinton could propose another plan diverting
15 percent of Social Security reserves into the stock market. Now the
Democratic Party's tone is much more populist and even antibusiness. Harry
Reid has begun his tenure as Senate minority leader by doing his best
imitation of Huey Long: "They are trying to destroy Social Security by
giving this money to the fat cats on Wall Street, and I think it's wrong!"

What you hear these days is not liberalism. It's conspiracyism. It's the
belief that the Bushite corporate cabal is going to do to domestic programs
what the Bushite neocon cabal did in the realm of foreign affairs. It's the
belief in malevolent and shadowy forces that will grab everything for their
own greedy ends. This is Michael Moore-ism applied to domestic affairs, and
it will leave the Democrats only deeper in the hole.

I don't deny that many business and Wall Street types would like to capture
the system for their own benefit. As Theodore Roosevelt observed, every new
social arrangement begets its own kind of sin, which has to be punished by
law. But as Roosevelt and his great hero Alexander Hamilton understood,
corruption is the price we pay for economic freedom, and the benefits of
that freedom vastly outweigh the costs.

Hamilton and Roosevelt championed markets because they arouse energies,
channel information, allocate resources and create enormous wealth. Plans
to create private Social Security accounts aren't sops to the securities
industry. They use the power of the market to solve an otherwise
intractable problem.

The outline of the problem is clear. When the Social Security program was
created, there were 42 workers for each retiree. Now there are about three
workers per retiree, and in 2030 there will be two.

The White House is heading toward a reform plan that would tie the benefit
levels to prices rather than wages, which is a serious benefit cut. It
would then use the power of the markets to compensate retirees for those
cuts and to create a reserve fund to make the system solvent.

The government would essentially borrow at 2 percent in real terms, invest
that money through regulated private accounts in the market and get a
return, based on conservative historical averages, of about 4.6 percent.
Those returns would, over time, cover the $11 trillion in liabilities that
threaten to bring down the system.

People who think the markets are a rigged game, or who think financial
profits are just paper profits, won't like this approach. But the fact is
that over the next decade - whether we are talking about pensions, health
care or even schools - the central argument is not going to be over whether
to apply market competition to these problems. It's going to be over how to
structure competition to produce the most dynamic results.

I may be a complete idiot, but I actually believe that Democrats and
Republicans can reach a grand bargain that includes personal Social
Security accounts while addressing Democratic objections.

You already see some Democrats growing concerned over the perception that
their party is trying to build a bridge to the 1930's. On Thursday, the
House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, struck a very different tone than her
Senate colleague. She is willing to enter into discussions about Social
Security reform with no preconditions. Meanwhile, a Democratic underground
is forming, made up of members of Congress willing to consider a grand
compromise with Bush to make the system solvent.

Even the White House folks seem to know they can't do this without
Democratic support. They will have to protect the system's progressivity
and have mechanisms built in to combat the corruption. They're going to
have to do something about the deficit.

This is not 1932 any more. This is not the age of big, static state
institutions. This is actually about building a bridge to the 22nd century.