The MSM has been letting Obama get away with many falsehoods over his campaign. They’ve ignored his lack of judgment when it came to those he associated with. They ignored his Chicago style politics early in his career and his total lack of experience. They’ve minimized stories that would have been front page news if McCain or Palin’s name were attached.
But with all that you have to give Newsweek a thumbs up for highlighting a Obama outright lie. He told a group of people in Florida yesterday that McCain voted for a plan that would have the Social Security benefits of “elderly women” at risk in today’s turbulent stock market:
And I’ll protect Social Security, while John McCain wants to privatize it. Without Social Security half of elderly women would be living in poverty – half. But if my opponent had his way, the millions of Floridians who rely on it would’ve had their Social Security tied up in the stock market this week. Millions would’ve watched as the market tumbled and their nest egg disappeared before their eyes. Millions of families would’ve been scrambling to figure out how to give their mothers and fathers, their grandmothers and grandfathers, the secure retirement that every American deserves. So 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.
But FactCheck.org… called him out on the outright lie and Newsweek, of all MSM rags, printed the factcheck article which says:
That’s not true. The plan proposed by President Bush and supported by McCain in 2005 would not have allowed anyone born before 1950 to invest any part of their Social Security taxes in private accounts. All current retirees would be covered by the same benefits they are now.
Obama would have been correct to say that many workers under age 58 would have had some portion of their Social Security benefits affected by the current market turmoil – if they had chosen to participate. And market drops would be a worry for those who retire in future decades. But current retirees would not have been affected.
To top it all off Factcheck called him out on another outright lie the day before this latest one:
A new Obama ad characterizes the “Bush-McCain privatization plan” as “cutting Social Security Benefits in half.” This is a falsehood sure to frighten seniors who rely on their Social Security checks. In truth, McCain does not propose to cut those checks at all.
The ad refers to a Bush proposal from 2005 to hold down the growth of benefits for future retirees. Compared to the buying power of benefits paid to today’s retirees, that would not have been a “cut” for anybody. It would have been a “cut” of half only in relation to benefits now promised to retirees who have yet to be born. And for average workers, that “cut” in 2075 was projected by one of Obama’s own economic advisers to be 28 percent, not “half.”
The ad also says McCain voted “in favor of privatizing Social Security.” The term “privatizing” could give the wrong impression. McCain does support creating government-managed accounts that would allow individuals to invest some portion of their Social Security payroll taxes in widely diversified stock or bond funds.
This is the “change” he has been talking about? Trying to scare people with lies?
It’s quite apparent that Obama and his campaign are downright worried about this election, a election they all said would be a cakewalk has now become a race and to ensure his victory he has resorted to his tried and true Chicago style politics.
Ch-ch-change……sure thing.
UPDATE
Funny….now Salon has a article out that’s critical of Obama and the changes he has been making to his website:
the Obama campaign modified his position on a sensitive issue: Social Security. Compare the current “Seniors & Social Security” page with the previous version. Now, tell me why, oh why, would the Obama campaign decide to delete the following sentence: “[Obama] does not believe it is necessary or fair to hardworking seniors to raise the retirement age.” Is he trying to stoke anxiety about his position on Social Security?
The new page includes some reassuring language about “work[ing] with members of Congress from both parties to strengthen Social Security and prevent privatization while protecting middle class families from tax increases or benefit cuts.” Still, for those who pay attention to such things, what the new page leaves out is as important as what it puts in.
AND….The Astute Blogger links to some HuffPo posters who found another Obama campaign official with some ties to this economic mess we are in:
Barack Obama has slammed the banking industry for its predatory use of sub-prime mortgages, which are pushing millions of American homeowners toward foreclosure.
But his campaign’s Finance Chair, Penny Pritzker, owned a failed Chicago thrift that helped pioneer sub-prime financial instruments and faced accusations of abuse.
Superior Bank of Chicago went belly up in 2001 with over $1 billion in insured and uninsured deposits. This collapse came amid harsh criticism of how Superior’s owners promoted sub-prime home mortgages. As part of a settlement, the owners paid $100 million and agreed to pay another $335 million over 15 years at no interest
~~~But this seven-year-old bank failure has relevance in another way today, since the chair of Superior’s board for five years was Penny Pritzker, a member of one of America’s richest families and the current Finance Chair for the presidential campaign of Barack Obama, the same candidate who has lashed out against predatory lending.
Though Superior Bank collapsed years before the current sub-prime turmoil that is rocking the world’s financial markets – and pushing those millions of homeowners toward foreclosure – some banking experts say the Pritzkers and Superior hold a special place in the history of the sub-prime fiasco.
“The [sub-prime] financial engineering that created the Wall Street meltdown was developed by the Pritzkers and Ernst and Young, working with Merrill Lynch to sell bonds securitized by sub-prime mortgages,” Timothy J. Anderson, a whistleblower on financial and bank fraud, told me in an interview.
“The sub-prime mortgages,” Anderson said, “were provided to Merrill Lynch, by a nation-wide Pritzker origination system, using Superior as the cash cow, with many millions in FDIC insured deposits. Superior’s owners were to sub-prime lending, what Michael Milken was to junk bonds.”
In other words, if you traced today’s sub-prime crisis back to its origins, you would come upon the role of the Pritzkers and Superior Bank of Chicago.
Why is this not surprising?
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