Hilary Clinton - Third Way - Social Security - Buyer's Remorse [View all]

[FreakinDJ]

There no doubt Third Way is pushing Hilary Clinton through their endless attacks of Hilary's opponents and massive Multi-$Millions donated to her Super PACs. Third Way itself is named after Bill Clinton's policies.

The only doubt is Third Way a Democrat organization


Hilary's proposals for changes to Social Security well prove to be the leading salvo of incremental legislation to unravel the fabric of the "New Deal"

Wall Street Uses the Third Way to Lead Its Assault on Social Security

Let me attempt again to make the basic facts clear. Third Way is not a “liberal think tank.” It does not take “a centrist approach.” It is not run by “fellow progressives.” It is not concerned with “protecting entitlements.” It is not even a “think tank.” Third Way is a creature of Wall Street. It’s version of “protecting” the safety net was made infamous during the Tet offensive in Viet Nam when the American officer explained that “it became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” Third Way is the Wall Street wing of the Democratic Party, which seeks to defeat Democratic candidates like Elizabeth Warren running against Wall Street sycophants like Senator Scott Brown and seeks to unravel the safety net programs that are the crown jewels of the Democratic Party. Wall Street’s “natural” party is certainly the Republican Party, but Wall Street has no permanent party or ideology, only permanent interests. Third Way serves its financial interests and the personal interests of its senior executives. Wall Street has always been the enemy of Social Security and its greatest dream is to privatize Social Security. Wall Street’s senior executives live in terror of being held accountable under the criminal laws for their crimes. They became wealthy by leading the “control frauds” that drove the financial crisis and the Great Recession. This is why Wall Street made defeating Warren a top priority.

Third Way is run by a man who Laursen terms an “acolyte” of Pete Peterson. Peterson is a Republican, Wall Street billionaire who has two priorities – imposing austerity on America and privatizing Social Security. Privatizing Social Security is Wall Street’s unholy grail. They would receive hundreds of billions of dollars in fees and ensure that their firms were not only “too big to fail,” but “too big to criticize” if they could profit from a privatized retirement system. (We do not know who funds Third Way because it refuses to make its donors public. Given who dominates its Board of Trustees, however, the donors must be overwhelmingly from Wall Street.)

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/12778-wall-street-uses-the-third-way-to-lead-its-assault-on-social-security

You can find a list of their board members and their background at the above link

Third Way Comes Clean: They Don't Intend To Strengthen Social Security


Progressives really owe Third Way a debt of gratitude. Finally, some austerity hawks that come clean about the true intentions of their proposals to cut Social Security. Unlike Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, who were shamed into insisting that their proposed cuts were only for the purpose of “strengthening Social Security,” in their report, "Saving Social Security," Jim Kessler and David Kendall from Third Way effectively admit that cutting Social Security should be a part of deficit reduction.

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/third-way-comes-clean-they-dont-inten

Pete Peterson - you need to remember that name - he runs Third Way

Pete Peterson, an investment banker, Nixon commerce secretary, and president of the conservative Concord Coalition, has sounded the alarm regularly since publishing an anti-Social Security polemic in the New York Review of Books in 1982.


Like many of its constituent members, ICI is now pushing privatization more quietly "A lot of firms are trying to find a key way to support this," says Tim Penny, a former Democratic congressman from Minnesota and an adviser to the Cato Institute. "I don't think you're going to see a lot of this happening under their names. They'll stay behind the scenes, twice-removed." Adds a Democratic congressional aide, "They don't want to be seen as swarming over the dying carcass of Social Security."

http://www.globalaging.org/pension/us/socialsec/socials.htm

And if you take away anything from this long post let it be this ...

Rob Shapiro, vice president of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), agrees. "Only a Democrat can lead the effort for Social Security reform. The Democrats will just kill any Republican who tries to mess with Social Security. So, next year, we are going to run a big project on Social Security." (According to the Wall Street Journal, State Street is planning to help fund the DLC's think tank, the Progressive Policy Institute.)

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/1996/11/end-social-security-we-know-it?page=2

Which leads to Hilary's proposals for "Changes" to the Social Security program. They are designed to make the program Highly Unpopular with a large segment of the voting public. The First Step to the final goal of Privatizing Social Security

Why It's Misleading to Swear to Protect the Poor's Social-Security Benefits

Any plan that maintains one group’s payouts while diminishing others’ risks deflating support for the program as a whole.


This is a problem for those who want to see Social Security survive. As the old adage, common in policy circles, has it, programs for the poor have poor support: A change that cuts benefits for the middle- and high-income Social-Security recipients could at the same time cause those groups to be less supportive of the program as a whole.

Last week, Douglas Elmendorf, the former director of the Congressional Budget Office and the future dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, laid out a plan for Social Security in The Washington Post. He focused on two main points. He said that the age at which people can collect full benefits should not be raised—doing so would produce benefits cuts to those who need Social Security the most. And he said that the program needed to raise more revenues. The way to do that would be to raising the salary cap below which all earnings are subjected to Social-Security taxes—it’s currently about $118,500 and is adjusted according to wage inflation year to year. Raising this cap would increase the tax revenues coming into the program, and could make it solvent.


http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/hillary-social-security/411901/

Hilary has stated many times stumping during 2015 she was in favor of "tweaking" Social Security but doesn't support raising the cap.

The Devil is in the details and Hilary's position mirrors the position of Wall St interest that have vowed to privatize Social Security