Gamble with Social Security?

In my mail when I got home today, there was a political advertisement from the Minnesota DFL State Committee. The front page headline read, "Do you want to take a gamble on Social Security?" The back cover showed a Dow Jones Industrial Average chart covering the dates 22 September through 3 October 2008. The headline reads: "What if Bush and McCain invested your future Social Security savings in today's plummeting stock market?"

Of course, this is nothing more than a scare tactic on the part of the Democrat party that wholly conceals the facts about the true state of the Social Security system altogether.

More than eight years ago, President George W. Bush’s Commission to Strengthen Social Security (a commission headed by liberal Democrat and former Senator Patrick Moynihan) proposed three specific reform plans. Even so, it has been primarily liberal Democrats -- like those that populate Minnesota's DFL Party -- that have made certain that no real reform comes to the system that is already in worse shape than Wall Street is today!

The real secret concealed by Democrat demagoguery about Social Security and their unconscionable scare tactics at every election cycle is that it is the Democrat leadership that has no real plan to deal with the impending collapse of the Social Security financial system.

Allow me to remind you that it was Democrat party-line votes that quashed every attempt over the last several years to do anything about the mounting crisis being fostered by Democrat-instituted policies and Democrat-appointed leadership at Fannie-Mae and Freddy-Mac. This despite warnings from policy think-tanks as long ago as 1997 -- more than a decade -- indicating that policies and procedures at these two quasi-governmental agencies would invariably lead to serious economic consequences.

It was the Democrat party's unwillingness to take any action to protect our economy from happenings at Fannie-Mae and Freddy-Mac that contributed in large part to the very market collapse they, in turn, depicted on their political flyer opposing John McCain.

So, which is worse? Gambling your retirement funds on Wall Street, where at least you have a hope of some gain, or leaving your Social Security in the hands of the Democrat politicians that already know the system is destined to collapse and they are unwilling to muster the courage to do anything about it?

Maybe it's just that "doing something about it" means two things that Democrats are loathe to do:

1. Surrender any part of their control to the public sector, and
   
2. Admit what they've done to damage Social Security as an "investment" over the years that they have administered it.

Think about it.

-- Richard