No slack for the president

No slack for the president

In response to Maurice Kane-shiro’s letter March 31 defending President Bush, I would refer him to a news story in Nation magazine revealing the defection of Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law to the United States. The son-in-law informed former Secretary of State Colin Powell that Saddam’s arsenal had taken its toll through eight years of war with Iran, the Gulf War and the eight years of quarantine under the U.S. no fly zone. But Colin Powell never revealed this to the United Nations.

The president, vice-president and Secretary of State Condolezza Rice all spoke with complete certainty that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and they knew exactly where they were located.

As for the medical reform bill the administration passed, the cost runs several billion dollars more than what the administration presented to Congress.

The bill does not benefit seniors but does profit the nation’s pharmaceutical corporations handsomely. The bill prohibits the federal government to bargain for lower cost prescription drugs for our nation’s seniors and it prohibits seniors from traveling to Canada or Mexico for lower drug prices.

As for Social Security, I laugh myself silly when I read about the administration’s concern for the fate of FDR’s most successful programs. The Republican Party has opposed Social Security since its inception and the privatization scheme is a giant step to destroy the program. As the president has repeatedly stated, the money in Social Security is "our money."

But once the money is removed from Social Security, the money is no longer our money but Wall Street’s money.

Friends of mine have invested their retirement dollars in (401)Ks and they lost what they invested. They still have Social Security. The privatization scheme is a Wall Street ploy to reap $2 trillion in service charges at the expense of American taxpayers.

Social Security has served the nation’s workers well for 70 years and will continue servicing American workers well into the future. The only remedy to protect the baby boomers rests on lifting the cap on wage earners earning more than $90,000 yearly and revise the trillion-dollar-tax cut to our nation’s wealthiest.

Samuel Rosen

Newbury Park