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TechnoratiRetirement savings plan, health-care proposals put citizens at financial risk, Democrat says
DAYTONA BEACH, Florida - Democrat Barack Obama accused Republican presidential rival John McCain on Saturday of wanting to gamble with the retirement savings and health care of Americans by subjecting them to the uncertainty of open markets.
![[US Democratic presidential candidate Illinois Senator Barack Obama addresses a rally at Bathune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida. Obama accused his White House foe John McCain Saturday of wanting to "gamble" away Americans' life savings by privatizing Social Security at a time of crisis on the markets.
(AFP/Emmanuel Dunand)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/obamadaytona.jpg "obamadaytona.jpg")
As the government prepared another costly bailout of the reeling U.S. financial system, Obama said McCain's support for privatizing Social Security and opening up the health care system to market forces would put Americans at financial risk.
He attacked McCain for supporting some privatization of Social Security retirement funds, a proposal President George W. Bush made a centerpiece of his 2004 White House campaign but was unable to push through Congress.
"I know Senator McCain is talking about a 'casino culture' on Wall Street -- but the fact is, he's the one who wants to gamble with your life savings," Obama said at a rally in Daytona Beach in Florida, a state with a large population of seniors and retired workers.
"That is not going to happen when I'm president," the Illinois senator said, asking the crowd to imagine the fears of retirees who found their Social Security funds tied to the current market.
"We're not going to gamble with your ability to retire with dignity after a lifetime of hard work. We're going to strengthen and protect Social Security so it's a safety net our families can count on -- today, tomorrow and always," he said.
The latest political skirmishing came as the Bush administration readied a $700 billion financial markets rescue plan for Congress that would almost certainly restrict the agenda and limit the number of costly programs advocated by whoever becomes the next president.
The turmoil on Wall Street recently has dominated the campaign for the November 4 presidential election, with McCain and Obama trading attacks over who offered the best economic approach.
'SCARE TACTICS'
The McCain campaign said Obama was trying to scare Florida's senior citizens about their retirement accounts.
"John McCain is 100 percent committed to preserving Social Security benefits for seniors, and Barack Obama knows it -- this is a desperate attempt to gain political advantage using scare tactics and deceit," said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.
McCain has generally taken an anti-regulatory stance, and has decried the Wall Street greed he says led to the financial meltdown. But Obama dismissed the Arizona senator's attempts to recast himself as a proponent of regulating financial markets.
"There's only one candidate who's called himself 'fundamentally a deregulator' when deregulation is part of the problem," Obama said.
He criticized McCain for writing in a magazine that his health care plan would do for that industry what deregulation had done for banking. He said McCain wanted to run health care the way Wall Street has been run.
"Well, Senator, I know some folks on Main Street who aren't going to think that's such a good idea," he said.
McCain's health care plan would use tax credits to help shift from employer-based insurance coverage to an open market system where people can choose from competing policies. In the current issue of "Contingencies," the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries, McCain touts his approach.
"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation," McCain wrote.
The McCain campaign said he was specifically talking about a proposal to allow consumers to purchase health insurance across state lines, which would create more options and drive down costs.
Obama's health-care plan would keep the existing job-based insurance system but expand government involvement in a public-private system aimed at eventually covering 47 million uninsured Americans.
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That 3 fingers are pointing back at Obama -- I wonder why ?
Namaste
Nice point Namaste.
For those who haven't been paying attention, the blank check Paulson and Bernanke are writing to bail out their Wall St. cronies will assure that there will be no money for ANY domestic programs...social security, medicare, road maintenance, etc.
Can you say THIRD WORLD NATION ?
Where's Dennis Kucinich when we need him? He's the only candidate who was proposing universal single-payer health CARE for all Americans. Obama is not offering health car, but a health insurance plan founded on the current for-profit insurance industry/lobby. If you think you're going to get health care under Obama, you're wrong.
You can forget universal healthcare, it just went to Wall Street. Privitization is simplty another teerm for wealth transfer from the bottom to the top.
Maverick? lf l remember he was a fast talking gamblin' con man, quick with a gun, known for his thirst for cheap booze, and younger woman of a certain persuasion, ready to lose everything for a quick buck. Sound like anybody you know?
Great character for a movie, wrong traits for a president
Republicans & Democrats Both Put Us At Financial Risk
The presidential candidates of both major parties, Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator Barack Obama, quickly signaled their support for the wholesale bailout of the banks and big investors, and prominent congressional Democrats issued assurances that they would obey the demands of Paulson, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke and Bush and pass the required legislation by the end of next week.
The immediate line-up of both parties and the media behind the bailout plan for Wall Street stands in the starkest contrast to their indifference and inaction in regard to the plight of millions of American working people, who face a rising tide of home foreclosures, layoffs and sinking living standards. When it comes to the social needs of the people, the universal cry from corporate America and the two parties is, “There is no money,” but when the fortunes of the financial elite are threatened, the full power of the government and unlimited resources are marshaled virtually at a moment’s notice.
read more: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/sep2008/econ-s20.shtml
It seems that Obama may not be your perfect choice but certainly is the better choice.
So let's elect Obama, then get to work on Universal Health Care.
Sorry, but with regard to health care, Nader or McKinney are definitely a better choice. Single payer is the only plan that will protect folks health care from the depredations of "market forces."
For Obama to suggest that his healthcare (or, insurance care, as I prefer to call it) plan will, unlike McCain's, protect folks from "market forces" is the same as Bush claiming Sadam Hussein had WMD. In fact, Obama touted his plan as one where, if you liked your current health plan, you could keep it. This whole current system which is such a disaster and which Obama plans on keeping (he always points out that he is not starting from scratch) is based on the "market forces" unleashed when you have multiple insurers. The idea that employer based healthcare is not subject to market forces is baloney. Ask employees who have suddenly found that their coverage/deductible/copay has radically changed (and not for the better) when their employer changed plans based on those same "market forces". And Obama's plan would subsidize the insurance companies who are now ripping us all off. In fact, one could even argue that his plan is a "bailout" for insurance companies whose clients can longer pay for even "sub-prime" care.
Neither with Obama nor McCain will you get "universal" health care. The healthcare system both would perpetuate indeed runs healthcare the way Wall Street is run. Interesting that this free market, free trade cheerleader now paints himself as wanting to PROTECT folks from "market forces". What a joke! If Bush engaged in such hypocritical nonsense, you'd be all over him, and rightly so.
I find it extraordinary that with the entire future of the planet in the balance we have this person talking about electing Nader or McKinney. There is only one candidate in this so-called democracy to put your X next to. Its Obama. Like it or not, -I certainly don't like either party of entrenched power brokers who are dealing with the fait of humanity,- Obama can do the least damage and get the most accomplished. Neither of the other two WILL BE ABLE TO GET ANYTHING DONE. This system has been brought low by the fact that this form of government is not a Socialist democracy but a Capitalist democracy with a killer form of capitalism that is trying to kill its own people. Actually the USA is a Plutocracy.
This system in the USA requires an active supportive congress, regardless of the fact that most, if not all, are power brokers dealing with ways to take your money and use it for the advantage of the power elite rather than the public at large. At the very least Obama once knew what it was like to be poor. He did the right things to get where he has arrived. Whether his desire for stardom will be measured by the gravity of the office he wishes we will see, but at least he does not live the life of a military establishment figure. ENOUGH OF THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX, although we get a different version of it with the DNC.
A vote for either Nader or McKinne will help elect Mccain and Palin, the most opportunistic and stupid choice a candidate ever made for the VP spot. McCain left his brains on the floor of his prison cell because one is a patriot born to an advantaged military family does not mean they are intelligent. I like both of these people Nader or McKinne but this is not the time for idealism it died with the defeat of Kerry. Nader helped elect Bush in 2004 and we have the possibility to see what that has accomplished for the world in retrospect. Would this sort of intelligence, of Mccain and Palin you would want to see achieve power Mr. Aquifer? I have to question your understanding of the American political scene and look at your post as someone who lives in the world of the ideal rather than the world of reality.
I agree. Republican plants posing as progressives on progressive sites such as this one want us all to vote for Nader, McKinney, or some other 3rd party candidate --- to help McInsane win. At this point a 3rd party candidate has no chance of winning anyway, so why bother. Don't fall for it.
These smirking Rethuglicans have become multimillionaires from taxpayer money and want it to continue until they're multi-billionaires -- with McCain. Which reminds me: With all his money, McCain still gets monthly Social Security and Disability payments. How does he get away with that? Ah, it's probably in his wife's name. Those Rethuglican bastards know every trick in the book about cheating to get taxpayers' money.
OBAMA 2008
"McCain's health care plan would use tax credits to help shift from employer-based insurance coverage to an open market system where people can choose from competing policies"
Okay, that is a lousy plan.
But for Obama to say this,
"opening up the health care system to market forces would put Americans at financial risk"
- is stunningly hypocritical.
"opening up the health care system to market forces would put Americans at financial risk"
also a health risk for all.
It seems that Obama may not be your perfect choice but certainly is the better choice.
So let's elect Obama, then get to work on Universal Health Care.
Sept 21 - Greed Is The Seed
The present Wall Street situation underscores the unregulated system that is called market forces. There are no such things as " The so called "Free Market" it is a euphemism, a fabrication for the rich and powerful. It is a means for them to be able to do just as they wish with out regulation. " Greed is the seed and the sickness of most men's souls."
It is time for a change in the American system to use the best aspects of all economic systems including those that use some social ideas. This Capitalist sickness called "free market" is free to bankrupt America and the world. This gambling casino must stop! Financial controls are in order and the sooner the better. It is necessary to give abusers life sentences for white-collar criminals.
The government picks of the costs of the greed from these "free marketers" and that becomes socialism if any body is watching. Americans pay for it two ways first with exorbitant costs of failing mega- business than the cost of bailing them out when they have become too large and mismanaged by the CEO's as we have seen with Enron and so many others in the banking and saving and loan scandals. At the same time the mergers have cost Americans so many jobs in terms of so-called efficiency and economies of scale, created as a result of mergers. Not to mention the jobs shipped out of the country as a result of the desire to increase profits using third world labor.
Its time for the American people to get it, the entire system must be changed its all corrupt and it starts with the people you elect! It is they who are in collusion with business. The costs of pay packages of the managers who have no special rights to the amount of money they are given is picked up by the poor working people of the USA.
It is time to revamp both the political and economic system of the USA. Time to stop this system with its closed world of the rich out of control and to save the planet and the world-system that is melting down due to all of this uncaring greed.
All this, while at the same time sending the poor young people of the USA to die for these corrupt managers and a corrupt ideal, calling it patriotism since they are sent to die for an oil war. Terrorism? The terrorists exist at the very top of the American business ruling class. It is they and the munitions manufactures that have concocted this disaster called the American way.
Its time for Americans to join together and stop all the above with a national strike! Vote out every long-sitting corrupt politician . . .new, young, ethical people are required to run this country.
Here's Obama throwing a bone to progressives by seeming to be against privatization. He's also throwing a bone to the Propaganda Machine, because they will use this to claim he's liberal and a socialist.
What he should say regarding privatization is this: "When I am President, the defense of the USA will be seen to by the our national Armed Forces, without the egregious overbilling and lawlessness of the private mercenary companies so favored by the current administration. And, we will immediately institute a single-payer, nationalized health care program that guarantees full medical and dental benefits for all citizens..." The list of what he should say goes on and on. Too bad he won't say any of it.
See, when really important things like the social safety net, or our national defense are privatized, the original goals of the programs are discarded, and the prime directive becomes profits for the private companies.