Social Security Privatization Is A Foot-in-the-Door for Fascism
by Nancy Spannaus
Dec. 20 (EIRNS)"If the Bush Administration succeeds in ramming this and related measures through, we no longer have a government that the people of the United States control. We will then be under a fascist-style of dictatorship.
"Once they have their foot in the door, by getting the first leg on this Social Security control, they will go all the way. Because, why? We're now faced with a collapse of the U.S. dollar, U.S. currency, in the order of trillions, right now."
With these words, leading Democrat Lyndon LaRouche defined for an Ohio radio audience Dec. 16 exactly the significance of the breakneck drive for Social Security privatization which is being carried out by the Bush Administration. The ripoff planned by the Social Security scheme will be not just grand theft, accomplished by transferring workers' funds into the hands of the financial sharks on Wall Streetit will be the first step toward Chilean- or Hitler-style fascism in the United States.
Once you understand this objective, LaRouche said in the same interview, you understand why the Republicans carried out the "cold coup" in the Nov. 2 Presidential election, using voter suppression and every other means at their disposal to get a Bush victory. In this context, the fight against the Constitutional violations of the Voting Rights Act in the election takes on added significance: If the Nov. 2 results go through, the Bush crowd is that much closer to carrying off their fascist takeover. - It Starts in 1971 -
The attempt to grab Social Security funds for the private bankers did not begin recently, but started back in 1971, when the Nixon Administration destroyed the postwar Bretton Woods System. From that time on, the leading Synarchist bankers have been seeking to consolidate global fascist control, and to grab every income stream in sight, to stave off their bankruptcy. Among those streams, the pension funds of many nations have been prime targets.
Leading the drive for this theft from that time forward has been none other than George P. Shultz, a representative of the monetarist Chicago School, and key enforcer of austerity policies over the past three decades. Shultz played the decisive role in 1971 in getting Nixon to take the dollar off gold, and set up the gambling system known as the floating-exchange-rate system. It was during Shultz's tenure as Secretary of the Treasury (1972-74) that Gen. Augusto Pinochet carried out his coup in Chile, a coup Shultz endorses to this day.
Pinochet "no doubt did some unnecessarily brutal things," Shultz told a PBS interviewer in 2000, but this created a "decent economy." In his own autobiography, Shultz called the results "prosperity"! When the Chilean dictatorship, after eight years of murder and repression and looting, implemented the Social Security privatization in 1981, it was effectively carrying out the Chicago School plan. And, according to Jose Pinera, the Chilean Labor Minister who authored the plan before he left office in 1980, Shultzthen an advisor to incoming President Reaganvisited him in January 1981 in order to get briefed on the Social Security plan, so he could pass it on to President Reagan.
Shultz, who served as Secretary of State in the Reagan Administration, never was able to push the privatization plan for the U.S. through during Reagan's terms, despite a huge propaganda campaign about how the U.S. Social Security Trust Fund was allegedly about to go bankrupt. Instead, he and his cronies had to wait until the political conditions were ripe for crushing this most popular legacy of FDR's general welfare program. Those conditions came after 9/11, when the neo-con and synarchist bankers' crowd began to move aggressively toward authoritarian rule, with the "war on terror," the police-state measures of the Patriot Act, and the like. The contrived Bush "victory" on Nov. 2 of this year was the next necessary step, the means of getting a fully Republican-controlled Congress, in order to ram through the full fascist program. - A Snow Job -
Although, during the Presidential campaign, Bush concentrated on the "war on terror," he has gone into an astoundingly intense drive for privatization in recent weeks. There have been no less than five press conferences, or speeches, on the privatization over the last week. In each, the President has cited his "three principles": guaranteeing current and near-term retirees their Social Security; not raising taxes; and providing "personal accounts" for young workers.
In addition to enticing the younger generation with the idea they can "get rich," the Bush Administration is also making threats, saying that deep cuts will be necessary if privatization is not carried out.
Yet, every study of the privatization plansmost of which come from Chilean Pinera's project at the Cato Instituteshows that they themselves will cut benefits, in addition to demanding a massive increase in government borrowing in order to make up for the siphoning-off of trillions of dollars into the financial markets. The markets, of course, are ecstatic, as they are looking at an income stream of $125 trillion over the next 75 years.
And, if you look at how the Chilean labor force fared under the Pinochet regime, including privatization, you see a dramatic rise in the poverty rate (41.2% of the population in 1989), a decline in calories consumed (1,629 a day in 1990), and a large increase in unemployment. - An Institutional Fight -
The response of many Democrats and Republicans on Capitol to the Bush rush to privatize has been strong, and most are anticipating a very tough fight on whatever privatization bill the President submits. Senior citizens' groups, labor, and others have held press conferences, and this time, unlike with Medicare "reform," the American Association of Retired Persons is actively opposing the scam.
But success in opposing Bush's drive will require more than the strong defensive posture which many Congressmen are putting up. The population, Congress included, has got to realize that the giant ripoff under discussion is not just another greedy scheme, an Enron II, but primarily a means of introducing a fascist regime in the United States, as the pivot for consolidating a global fascist dictatorship.
For, as LaRouche emphasized in his Dec. 16 interview, not even the trillions of dollars in Social Security funds can bail out the system, which is on the edge of an avalanche of collapse. The bankers are going to need to "take it all," to try to survive, and they are already doing the same thing in many other nations, such as Peru, Mexico, France, and Germany. What's on the agenda is global fascism, just as it was in the 1930s.
Not surprising, then, that George Shultz, that old fascist "Chicago Boy," not only created the Bush II Administration, but is shepherding California Governor, and avowed Hitler admirer, Arnie Schwarzenegger in his political career. If the Social Security privatization is not defeated explicitly as the coup attempt it is, there is much, much worse to come.
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