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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SGJ who wrote (667770)	1/9/2005 12:35:53 PM
From: JDN	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 769670

I agree, we gotta bring this to a close ASAP even if it means DRASTIC measures. I hope they go the DEATH SQUADS route now being discussed. Its time we bring TERROR to the TERRORISTS. Only, dont just kill the terrorist but kill his entire family. That will eliminate the Arab retaliation mentality and strike PURE TERROR in their hearts. I see children turning their Dads in to escape death. jdn

To: SGJ who wrote (667770)	1/9/2005 12:46:44 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

AARP and fear-mongering The AARP is running full-page newspaper ads around the country attacking President Bush's plan to let workers voluntarily invest a small part of their Social Security payroll taxes in stock and bond funds. The ads compare investing in equities to slot machine gambling, an accusation that analysts say is wildly irresponsible at best and hypocritical at worst. One of the ads shows a man and woman in their early 40s saying, "If we feel like gambling, we'll play the slots...There are places in retirement planning for risk. Social Security is not one of them." Another ad states: "Winners and losers are stock market terms. Do you really want them to become retirement terms?" This may come as a surprise to many of AARP's millions of members and members-to-be who consider their stock investments in diversified mutual funds to be a sensible, prudent way to provide them with sufficient income in their retirement years. "There is a difference between taking a risk in the stock market and playing the slots," says Derrick Max, executive director of the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security, a coalition of business group that supports Mr. Bush's plan. "Younger workers who are reading these ads, even senior workers, know that if they want to have a good retirement, it is essential that they need to be invested in equities," Max said. Reading these ads, one would think that the AARP wants nothing to do with stock market investing. But the AARP is itself deeply into stocks. "The AARP makes a lot of money selling annuities and insurance products. If they think those annuities aren't being invested in the stock market, then I'd like to show them a money tree I have," Max said. Labor unions, too, engage in the same fear-mongering charges against Mr. Bush's plan. "But all the unions have their pension plans privately invested in stocks," says Michael Tanner, chief Social Security analyst at the Cato Institute. More than 84 million Americans, or about half the adult population, own stock directly or indirectly through mutual funds. This doesn't include defined benefit pension plans maintained by many businesses, local governments and other organizations that also invest in stocks, according to the Investment Company Institute. The AARP's ad strategy is to create and promote fears about investing a portion of one's payroll taxes in stocks or bonds in the hope that it will frighten enough people into opposing Mr. Bush's plan. But pollster John Zogby, whose surveys show strong support for the idea among all age groups, says supporters of private Social Security investment accounts are not easily frightened or deterred by the usual ups and downs of the stock market. "If you go just by the polling numbers, they indicate support for private investment plans has not gone down. Even when the stock market declined, support stayed constant," Mr. Zogby said. Message to the AARP: This time fear-mongering may not work. -- Don Lambro, senior national political reporter posted at 4:21 PM