The Center for Media and Democracy is circulating the following alert:
March 19, 2012
CONTACT: Nikolina Lazic at nikolina@prwatch.org
Say No to a “Grand Swindle” on Social Security and Medicare!
Dear Friend of CMD,
If the job-killing sequester wasn’t bad enough, Washington is buzzing about the possibility that the President and Congress might replace the sequester with something infinitely worse — the Grand Swindle — brought to you by Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson and his “Fix the Debt” gang, who we exposed in a recent report and cover story in The Nation magazine.
President Obama has signaled repeatedly that he is willing to cut “entitlements,” including Social Security, as part of a deal that includes higher taxes.
What is he thinking? Workers pay into the Social Security system their entire lives – just to use the word “entitlements” is caving in to the Peterson gang. Two-thirds of folks on Social Security rely on the average check of $1,200 a month for HALF THEIR INCOME. Since the Wall Street meltdown, people need the program more than ever and that includes six million kids who are orphaned or living with family members receiving Social Security.
The elite media calls it a “Grand Bargain,” but what this type of deal would really do is needlessly blow a hole in one of the most successful and treasured programs of the New Deal era.
Click here to tell Congress to say no to a Grand Swindle that includes cuts to Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid.
The deficit, caused by the 2008 Wall Street economic crash, has been cut in half in the last few years and is in steep decline. There is, however, an ongoing jobs crisis — a terrible, needless crisis condemning older workers to a future largely dependent on Social Security and damaging the lifelong earning potential of young workers. The jobs crisis demands more government spending not less, a simple fact that even Ronald Reagan understood.
Tell Congress that overall budget cuts kill jobs, the bigger the cut the bigger the kill. The sequesters will cost us some 750,000 jobs, but a “Grand Bargain” along the lines of Simpson-Bowles will cost us some 4 million jobs, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Tell President Obama and Congress, we say no to a Grand Swindle. Priority number one is jobs.
Click Here to Take Action
About the Center for Media and Democracy
The Center for Media and Democracy is a non-profit investigative reporting group whose work aids public awareness about the people, companies, and groups attempting to shape the media and our democracy. Founded in 1993, our national reporting and analysis focus on exposing corporate spin. We accept no funding from for-profit corporations or the government. The Center for Media and Democracy’s websites are PR Watch, SourceWatch, BanksterUSA, ALECexposed and Food Rights Network.
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Editor’s Note: At TGP we have a policy of general contempt for petitions of any kind to the government when we understand the rulers know quite well what they are doing, are demonstrably cynical and corrupt, and the petition involves obvious demands that any semi-decent politician should be for or against in accord with the actual interests of the public or environment and need no reminders. Instead of petitions we favor organizing and direct action. Stand up for what we believe is right and do not beg those who have stolen our national patrimony and immersed the world in the horror of continuous war.
From time to time, revolting and meek as these petitions seem for truly free citizens, but in recognition of the severity of a crisis in which everything must be tried, we make some exceptions. This is one.
