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Politics : The Donkey's Inn -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rascal who wrote (4258)	7/26/2002 3:46:00 PM
From: Mephisto	Respond to of 15516

"Who would benefit directly from the creation of "personal accounts" under Social Security?" Those personal accounts won't be like personal stock portfolios. The Social Security Administration can't and won't become a stockbroker for 130 million clients, most of them with quite small accounts. Instead it's likely that a privatization scheme would require individuals to invest with one of a handful of designated private investment funds. That would mean enormous commissions for the managers of those funds. And those who would be likely to benefit showed their appreciation, in advance: b>During the 2000 election, according to opensecrets.org, campaign contributors in the two categories labeled "securities and investment" and "miscellaneous finance" (basically individual wheeler-dealers) gave Mr. Bush almost six times as much as they gave Al Gore. Here, too, Mr. Bush's past is prologue. I reported in an earlier column the story of Utimco, the University of Texas fund that, while Mr. Bush was governor and the current secretary of commerce, Donald Evans, headed the U.T. regents, placed more than $1 billion with private funds, many with close business or political ties to Mr. Bush himself Among the beneficiaries were the Wyly brothers, who later financed a crucial smear campaign against John McCain. ("Bush reveals his poisonous colors" was the headline of a piece about that campaign, written by the online pundit Andrew Sullivan.) Could America's retirement savings really be used to reward the administration's friends? Ask the teachers of Texas. In one of many odd deals during Mr. Bush's time as governor, the Texas teachers' retirement system sold several buildings without open bids, taking a $70 million loss, to a company controlled by Richard Rainwater, a prime mover behind Mr. Bush's rise to wealth. In an Aug. 16, 1998, article in The Houston Chronicle — which should be required reading for anyone trying to understand the Bush administration — the reporter, R. G. Ratcliffe, matter-of-factly summarized this and many other unusual deals thus: "A pattern emerges: When a Bush is in power, Bush's business associates benefit." Excerpt from the article, "The Private Interest" By PAUL KRUGMAN nytimes.com. July 26, 2002