RE: No Subject

[Javier Jimenez <jimenj@yahoo.com>]

>                   A Tale of
>                   Two
>                   Citizens
>
>
>   
>
>  Have you ever heard of Dennis Hastert?
>  How about Nancy McFadden? Probably
>  not. In case you missed it, Dennis just
>  managed to get himself elected to
>  Speaker of the U.S. House of
>  Representatives. Needless to say,
>  Hastert's year is off with a bang. 
>
>  As for Nancy, she works just a few miles
>  down the road from Dennis, where she
>  digs up and fixes water pipes for a living.
>  She also pays her union and Labor Party
>  dues. Nancy started off the year with a
That's her problem right there, she paid her dues.  She could have
saved or invested them!  I see the union bosses are not doing bad
themselves.
>  little surprise of her own. Only her
>  surprise wasn't as nice as Hastert's.
>
>  But first, let's introduce Dennis Hastert, who until this year held the
>  title of Chief Deputy Republican Whip. He's a relatively unknown,
>  six-term member of the House of Representatives from an Illinois
>  Congressional district that takes in a good chunk of territory just
>  west of Chicago. Before getting elected to Congress, Dennis spent
>  six years in the Illinois State House, and before that he was a school
>  teacher.
>
>  Hastert's elevation to the coveted Speaker position was pretty
>  quick. First, Newt Gingrich decided to hang it up after the
>  Republican electoral flop last November. Right after that, Louisiana
>  Republican Congressman Robert Livingston was ready to pick up
>  the Speaker's gavel when it was disclosed that he had been quite a
>  Casanova earlier in his career. Livingston quit the race, and the job
>  fell into Dennis Hastert's lap. Happy New Year, Dennis!
>
>  Since nobody ever heard of Dennis Hastert before all of this, and
>  since he's now the leader of the Republican majority in Congress,
>  just who is he? How does he vote? Who bankrolls his reelection
>  campaigns? 
>
>  BUSINESS LOVES DENNIS
>
>  Here's the scoop: Hastert's election as Speaker earned him an
>  article in the respected Congressional Quarterly magazine headlined,
>  "Hastert wins high marks from the business community." CQ also
>  says Hastert is "a solid conservative" who is "slightly to the right of
>  Gingrich."
>
>  As for his scores with groups that rate Congress, Hastert racked up
>  a zero on the AFL-CIO legislative scorecard for 1997, and he's
>  piled up a big 9 percent lifetime pro-worker rating from the
>  federation. The United Auto Workers gave him a zilch for 1997 also.
>  On the other hand, both the anti-labor U.S. Chamber of Commerce
>  and the National Federation of Independent Business gave him
>  perfect 100 percent ratings for 1997. 
>
>  With a record that miserable, just who is financing this guy? You
>  guessed it - big business. The Center for Responsive Politics
>  reports that for the 1997-98 election cycle, Hastert raked in
>  $62,200 from healthcare bosses, $59,990 from insurance kingpins,
>  $48,099 from electricity moguls, $43,480 from telephone company
>  bigwigs, $34,675 from greedy bankers, $28,100 from
>  pharmaceutical outfits, $27,599 from entertainment operators, and
>  another $78,400 from miscellaneous modern-day robber barons. 
>
I Guess we should all go and tag Michael Jordan an evil because he
also rakes in the millions from the corporate moguls of the world.
Perhaps, Chris could tell us how this capitalist society will function
without the evil corporations mentioned above.
>
>  And in case you were wondering, Hastert managed to pick up
>  $17,000 bucks in labor union PAC money, as of March 31, 1998.
>  Yes, this guy gets some union money. After all, we had to buy that 9
>  percent lifetime rating! (For the sake of balance, I should point out
>  that Hastert's counterpart on the Democrat side, House minority
>  leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri, also gets a wad of money from
>  corporations - a lot more than he does from labor.)
>
So the good guys sold their souls!!!  Shame on you!
>
>  Hastert's new year started off with a nice fat 28 percent pay
>  increase, boosting his annual salary to $171,500.
>
I guess his reward for long years of service.
>
>  And now, how about our other solid citizen, Nancy McFadden?
>  Well, she's not so thrilled with the year so far. Like most working
>  people, she's had her fill of the Lewinsky and impeachment
>  craziness. What she's really worried about is Social Security and
>  whether she'll be penniless in her old age. 
>
>  The drumbeat for Social Security "reform" is getting louder and
>  louder. But as you may remember, this isn't the first time Congress
>  has gone after Social Security. Back in 1983, 185 Democrats and
>  97 Republicans voted to approve Ronald Reagan's plan to raise the
>  full Social Security retirement age from 65 to 67. Dems and
>  Republicans in the Senate also went for the plan big-time. 
>
And thanks to that revamping, SS is now consuming more of our economy than
ever before; taxes are raised yearly without acts of Congress and the
deal continues to deteriorate for all generations.
>
>  As a result, Nancy McFadden now has to work until she's 67. She
>  recently decided she wanted to figure out just how much that
>  "reform" is going to cost her. She calculated her gross income
>  through 2029, when she'll be 67, factoring in a 2.5 percent annual
>  raise. (She prays that she won't be laid off, downsized, or injured.)
>  And she assumed that her 6.2 percent share of the payroll tax for
>  Social Security won't be going up.
>
>  If Nancy works until age 67, she will have to pay an extra $10,352
>  in Social Security taxes during those last two years. And if the
>  politicians manage to jack up the retirement age to 70 - which
>  many of them would like to do - she will end up working three
>  additional years, paying in an additional $26,871 in Social Security
>  taxes! At the age of 65, instead of collecting her hard-earned benefit
>  and enjoying her retirement, she'll be out in a ditch digging up pipes.
>  And still pumping major bucks into the system. But not to worry.
>  She assures me that by then her boss will have found an excuse to
>  replace her with what he likes to call "the young and the beautiful."
>
>  MORE NICE NEWS FOR NANCY
>
>  Well, Dennis and his friends in both parties are now hoping they can
>  deliver some more happy news for Nancy and her retirement plans.
>  Last March, Hastert voted - along with practically every Democrat
>  and Republican in Congress - to create a bogus Commission that
>  would "study" the nonexistent Social Security crisis. The problem
>  with the Commission is that nearly every group in the study team
>  favors some form of privatization. Hmm. I wonder what they're up
>  to? 
>
>  If Hastert and company can succeed in even partially privatizing
>  Social Security, Nancy will have to spend the years leading up to
>  retirement worrying about whether the stock market will drop and
>  suck the life out of her Social Security check.
>
Well, if Nancy doesn't feel confortable investing in the stock market, she
can invest in corporate and government bonds, or bank CDs.  After all, these
investment vehicles will provide a better yield, security and freedom that
Social Security will afford her.  I guess no one on the left managed to tell
her that!  Makes you wonder why?
>
>  Now you know why Dennis is smiling, and Nancy is not. In 1999, he
>  gets the Speakership and a gigantic raise. She learns she may still be
>  working in a ditch at the age of 70, and paying an extra $27,000 to
>  do it.
>
>  But Nancy hasn't given up yet. After all, she is a Labor Party
>  member. In fact, Nancy McFadden has a message for everyone: Get
>  out there and build the Labor Party's campaign to Save Social
>  Security!
>
>  Chris Townsend is Political Action Director of the United
>  Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (UE).
>
>
Good attempt at a scare tactic, but the Nancys of the world could do
better by taking care of their own retirement privately.  Doesn't her
union invest a pension in stocks and bonds?  Most do, so why not let
her do her own with her own money?  I guess that would open her eyes
wide and realize that the well-to-do union bosses have been ripping
her off for years.  That wouldn't be good business.