John McCain, Arizona's Senator and perennial presidential candidate, was born seventy five years ago today in the Panama Canal Zone. Social Security was signed into law on the very same day.
Three generations of Americans have worked and paid into this system, knowing that if misfortune should strike they'd be protected. But men like John McCain and Alan Simpson would strip this program from the hands of people who literally have no where to go if they lose the protection it affords.
The Republicans understand what started in 2006 – an instant replay of the elections of 1930 through 1936, which kept their hands off the controls for forty years. If they can't wound the common man and stick Barack Obama with the blame they're done on the national stage and they'll likely implode like the Whigs did.
We should offer McCain a birthday present in the same manner which they wrap and deliver 'presents' to the American people, protecting the best thing our government ever did and ending his career.
Seventy five years of success. That's what Social Security represents. It isn't perfect, but it works really well, with the only modifications one could wish for being an end to cap on contributions of high income individuals and a cap on payments to those who've done a good job of earning and saving.
Those sensible changes are not what Alan Simpson and the Cat Food Commission propose. They'll happily strip the elderly and the sick of protection, blame the Democrats for the mess they make, and our corrupt corporate media will undoubtedly help them with the spin.
And John McCain, he of the seven homes scattered coast to coast, will charge ahead full throttle to make the right's dream of restoring the inequalities of the Gilded Age come true. This is a truly amazing stance for a Senator from a state that is a famous winter destination for retirees. Arizona already staggers under the burden of a boycott due to letting Stormfront write their anti-Hispanic SB1070 bill. Snow birds without that extra few hundred a month will hunker down in the winter chill and stay home, further damaging Arizona's economy.
I don't think too much of McCain's vision for America. My mom is covered thanks to the Railroad Retirement Board, but the plans Alan Simpson is making, and which McCain shows every sign of backing, would hit my little home town of 900 like a neutron bomb. There are about 400 homes and I imagine that 10% or more would go empty as soon as winter weather comes, with the elderly doubling up to save on heating costs. The crash in housing prices hasn't really hit out there yet, but without Social Security it would take rural America by storm.
Ronald Reagan's brilliant scheme to empty mental hospitals and give us our cultural understanding of the homeless as being mentally ill or substance abusers was the start of it. Bush's unfunded, poorly executed adventure in Iraq coupled with our legitimate action against the Taliban are going to give us hundreds of thousands of veterans who will have trouble integrating with civilian life. McCain would like to poor a few million elderly and disabled on top of the unfortunates who already roam our streets.
Most puzzling to me is where a man like McCain went so wrong. Born in the canal zone? A Navy pilot? A prisoner of war? How does someone from this background completely turn against the American people, forsaking walking upright for crouching at the feet of his corporate masters, dispatching soldiers to fight and die in a war based on pretense, and apparently ready to turn our most vulnerable citizens out into the street?
John McCain is seventy five. He shows obvious signs of dementia – losing words, otherwise appearing confused, and who can forget this particular gaffe:
Senator McCain's moral failings, from screwing around on his many wives to screwing the American people over and over to his involvement in the Keating Five scandal, have been clearly visible for a long, long time.
The two Senators I've met personally, Grassley and Specter, are both his age but they're both still quite sharp. McCain is not.
If we were talking about the seat behind the wheel of a Cadillac concerned relatives would have long ago converged on the ADOT office and arranged for an end to his driving career. Since this is a Senate seat in a state full of retirees we somehow feel the need to treat his lapses in judgment differently for fear of offending those older voters.
As a man in my forties I've seen this up close and personal; my children have one surviving grandparent and other three have died within the last decade. Two of them were obviously slipping, we tried to do something about it, but they only lost their driving privileges after seriously injuring others.
America has a choice. A competent seventy five year old program that has served us well, or an elderly man who displays increasing signs of age related dementia on top of a history of misbehavior on both the personal and policy fronts. I can't understand why this is even a debate.