Bush Administration Declares War on Americans

Last time I looked, our system of government was such that it was designed to reflect the will of the people, not impose its own will on them. The word "war" may seem overly dramatic, but what else would you call it when the Administration has to set up a "war room" to propagandize for a policy no one outside of Bush's own wealthy constituency and their wingnut ideologue compatriots wants?

White House officials are telling Republican lawmakers and allies on K Street that they must begin to overcome opposition to President Bush's proposal for changing Social Security within six weeks, GOP strategists said yesterday.

The GOP strategists stressed that the six-week goal is not a hard deadline for a political breakthrough, but they said the public's tepid view of Social Security change cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely. The directive raises the possibility that Republicans will have to reconsider whether legislation can be passed this year, as Bush wants.

Polls show widespread skepticism of Bush's proposal for creating individual Social Security investment accounts for younger workers, and Democratic lawmakers have voiced nearly uniform opposition. The Washington Post reported over the weekend that some allies of the president are focused on possible split-the-difference deals that would significantly scale back Bush's proposal, yet enable him to claim an incremental victory.

The Treasury Department yesterday announced the formation of a Social Security "war room" and the hiring of three full-time employees to help coordinate and refine the administration's message on the issue. The war room, which the administration is calling the Social Security Information Center, will track lawmakers' remarks to their local news outlets, to help the White House detect signs of Republican concern or Democratic compromise.

"...the public's tepid view of Social Security change cannot be allowed to continue indefinitely." Doesn't that scare anyone? Doesn't it seem completely counter to the spirit of representative democracy that public opinion about an issue cannot be ALLOWED to continue? What are they going to do, start arresting people en masse for thought crimes?

The center is to be headed by Mark Pfeifle, an administration veteran who has been a spokesman for the Interior Department and last summer's Republican National Convention. Working with him will be Shannon Burkhart and Jill Willis, both of whom worked on the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign. The three were hired about two weeks ago.

Interesting how this isn't about getting the FACTS out, it's about the POLITICS, and about SELLING a policy that is going to screw over every working American and put the elderly out on the street where they used to be before a Democratic president decided that Americans had a right to live in at least some semblance of dignity in their final years. If Bush REALLY wanted to fix Social Security (in something other than the veterinary connotation of the word "fix"), wouldn't he hire an economist instead of a political salesman to get the word out?