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Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Foxx's Secret Plan to Privatize Social Security
Among the several small nuggets embedded in Congresswoman Virginia Foxx's performance yesterday at the Statesville town hall event was her sweeping endorsement of privatization: "I don't know anything the government can do better than the private sector."
"I don't know anything" covers a lot of real estate. Blackwater-style mercenaries are to be preferred to U.S. soldiers? Certainly, we now realize her preference that poor school children should eat chalk dust rather than government-sponsored free lunches. Poor sick people, heal yourselves! And then there's the biggest prize of all for Foxx and her fellow travelers ... Social Security.
Foxx's main squeeze, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, published his "Roadmap for America" recently, which called for the phasing out of Social Security and the further shift of wealth upward. We note that Ryan and the rest of the Republican Caucus have dropped the word "privatization" from their vocabulary, preferring now the word "choice" in its place, but Foxx yesterday in Statesville was pretty naked in her advocacy for throwing all Americans onto the tender mercies of the corporations.
Why would Foxx go through the motions of pretending to "listen" to her constituents when she's already signed on to the most radical of political philosophies? Oh, right. She's running for reelection against three different competitors and needs to pretend that she actually cares what voters think. And that she's not a radical extremist with political views that would seem perfectly at home in the court of King Louis XIV.
Paul Krugman's column today details the dishonest motives behind Ryan's attempt to hide "privatization" from public view. Yesterday in Statesville, Foxx let that door swing open a crack.
"I don't know anything" covers a lot of real estate. Blackwater-style mercenaries are to be preferred to U.S. soldiers? Certainly, we now realize her preference that poor school children should eat chalk dust rather than government-sponsored free lunches. Poor sick people, heal yourselves! And then there's the biggest prize of all for Foxx and her fellow travelers ... Social Security.
Foxx's main squeeze, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, published his "Roadmap for America" recently, which called for the phasing out of Social Security and the further shift of wealth upward. We note that Ryan and the rest of the Republican Caucus have dropped the word "privatization" from their vocabulary, preferring now the word "choice" in its place, but Foxx yesterday in Statesville was pretty naked in her advocacy for throwing all Americans onto the tender mercies of the corporations.
Why would Foxx go through the motions of pretending to "listen" to her constituents when she's already signed on to the most radical of political philosophies? Oh, right. She's running for reelection against three different competitors and needs to pretend that she actually cares what voters think. And that she's not a radical extremist with political views that would seem perfectly at home in the court of King Louis XIV.
Paul Krugman's column today details the dishonest motives behind Ryan's attempt to hide "privatization" from public view. Yesterday in Statesville, Foxx let that door swing open a crack.
Labels: Paul Ryan, Virginia Foxx
