How To Buy the White House

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is on the move to be the first president to be elected almost solely by corporate money. The recent Republican debate centered discussion on whether the government can be trusted to run Social Security. Refusing to back away from or temper his description of Social Security as a Ponzi scheme, Perry placed himself emphatically in the role of the representative of corporation’s philosophy and interests when it comes to the future of older people.


We are on the cusp of setting the agenda for the rest of the 1st quarter of the 21st century. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Teddy Roosevelt established a set of parameters which became the working agenda until the US entrance into WW1. Conservation, expansion of the US strength and power throughout the globe but especially in Asia, increasing the size of the Navy, fighting corporations and the wealthy to reduce and assure that the expansion of ownership of the US government by corporations was diminished and a Republican/progressive issue.

Up until now, 11 years into the 21st century, the essential agenda has been national security and anti-terrorism.. The national security and some of the defense industry has been privatized and is run by private security companies.

The second major aspect of the beginning of the 21st century has been the ascendancy of Wall St. as its own arbiter, escaping the reins of regulatory agencies. Despite the fact that the most significant downturn in the business cycle, (recession), was Wall St. based, it was those investment companies, determined to large to fail, which were the objects of the bailout program by Bush and Obama.

With the shift since the eighties to invest savings in money market funds which basically invest in the stock market, the continued fall of the Dow Jones Industrial Average statistics has reeked havoc over the majority of middle America’s savings for the future, especially for retirement. There are many now who had planned on retiring ‘early’ have determined that is not possible with their funds. As the unemployment percentage nationally remains high, recently graduating students are guarded about their possibility for acquiring a job.

Yet into this contaminated investment environment Perry and other Republican politicians beholding because of financial contributions to their campaigns to corporate interests want to have people invest a limited amount of money in money market funds, thence into the Stock Market. This is very much a priority interest of investment firms to remove the Social Security Funds from the government CD’s and other securities into the volatile Stock Market.

When the idea of supplementing one’s retirement income with IRA’s, an instrument where money could be invested tax free in the stock market was first proposed, it sounded like an excellent idea. The stock market, we were told again and again while it did have some down cycles, the trajectory was upward, and over time this type of investment would be much better than bank interest. So many of us with the goal of achieving sufficient funds to retire securely, did invest our funds into these money market instruments. And truly, I watched the returns come in. The amount of money certainly increased much greater than almost any bank interest then available.

Then came the crash from the internet bubble. Whew, that hurt but didn’t that account start to rise once again? Just about when the amount increased to where it had been before the internet bubble came the Clinton/Bush recession. Ouch, that hurt, but confidence remained for a recovery and improved earnings. Now, it is the Bush/Obama recession and hey lts time to call the whole thing off. I might make up this loss by the time I could retire, if the market improved and returned to its upward trajectory. Well, three years later, and stability hasn’t returned, oil speculation is taking its toll and my finger nails are but gone from biting.

Into this caldron of ongoing volatility, insecurity about the trajectory of the Stock Market and the first time in my lifetime true anxiety about how the government is being run one would be a fool to continue to look only to the stock market for investment. Bonds are a bit better. US Government Securities are still a great choice. Gold looks awesome.

One cannot depend on this Stock Market investment even over a lifetime--mine has been over 40 years--to accumulate to the levels necessary to assure sufficient return on investments to provide for a secure and healthy retirement. Social Security, as its name details, is security for elderly people. Most have paid into the system all their lives, many with two earner households. The money is invested in US Securities as part of the Social Security Trust Funds. The current solvency of these funds into the far future is not debated.

The misinformation that Perry and others are presenting with this Ponzi scheme accusation is that present earners are paying for current beneficiaries of the program. This is only true to the extent that the US Government cashes into the present monetary market the Securities purchased by the Social Security Trust Funds. These are debts incurred by the government because the fund moneys have been invested in the American Government. To the extent that the social security funds could access other investment instrument, the bearers of those bonds would have to pay back the social security fund also. Even though that idea seems better because it isn’t a government investment, the security of any other investment pales in comparison to the US Security bonds.

Fo reasons unclear to me, I think I am in shock about this right now, the Republicans/wealthy Americans are determined to lower the income and earning capacity of what we call middle class Americans. Pegging that number as those making less than $250,000.00 annually, there are obviously many of us in this category. What is the impetus for this decreasing standard of living? Why must middle Americans be required to have two income earners with a total of two full-time and two part time jobs to provide for a standard of living which has been presented as ever increasing as the wealth of the economy also increases?

Into the fray of Republican primary politics entered the person who is projected to receive the most advantage from the new Super PACS, Gov. Perry. These Super PACS are non-profit political funds which individuals and especially corporations can donate anonymously any amount of money for political purposes. Like the regular PACS which have a $500.00 per person limit for donations, they too cannot ‘collaborate’ with any particular campaign. Yet they can flood the airways with advertisements which are to educate the voting public.

In Thursday September 8th’s New York Times there’s a report by Nicholas Confessore, that a “new Super PAC [Make Us Great Again] with close ties to Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is laying plans to spend as much as $55 million to help him win the Republican nomination...” Further on he reports that another Super PAC “...‘the Perry Super PAC, co-founded by Perry’s former chief of staff, is to run a full-size presidential campaign using unlimited contributions that are illegal for the Perry campaign to accept..’”

Don’t think the other Republican candidates and Pres. Obama are slouches in this regard. What is startling is the amount of money being solicited by Perry within the first two weeks of his campaign.

In this way, Perry who is expected to receive the largest share of corporate donations, will do the bidding of the investment bankers, Wall St. brokers and other corporations. In this way, we will have a presidency bought and paid for by American based corporations, most of whose manufacturing, sales and profits are now coming from developing countries especially in Asia and northern South America. Whose interests do they have first in their calculations for their profits of the future? We can see their interests in America reside in accessing Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid funds to invest in foreign countries.