Koch Bros pull strings of America's puppet mainstream media in attack on Social Security

No 218 Posted by fw, July 13, 2011

Let it never be said that US senators can’t also be model citizen activists.

Watch the US Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders, expose the Koch Brothers‘ media campaign to kill Social Security. According to the savvy media folks at Brave New Foundation, who worked with Senator Sanders in creating the following video:

“Documents and interviews unearthed in recent months by Brave New Foundation reveal a vast cottage industry comprised of Koch brothers’ spokespeople, front groups, think tanks, academics and elected officials, which have built a self-sustaining echo chamber to transform fringe ideas into popular mainstream public policy arguments.“

Watch Bernie Sanders expose the Koch’s “echo chamber” then fight back by sharing this video with your friends.

In a related story, Reader Supported News (RSN), published a short piece entitled Koch Brother’s Campaign to Kill Social Security (June 23, 2011), which clarified the following four facts citizens need to know about Social Security:

1. Social Security belongs to you - the workers who contribute to it – not the politicians in Washington.
2. Social Security will never go bankrupt. Its major source of income comes from the contributions of workers and employers; as long as there are workers, Social Security will have income. Closing tax loopholes for wealthy individuals will increase the long term financial health of the program, and protect it for decades to come.
3. Raising the retirement age is a terrible idea and a large benefit cut. If you were claiming benefits as a 66 year-old retired worker and the full retirement age was changed from 66, where it is today, to 69 your benefits would be cut 20 percent. A typical benefit would drop from $14,000 a year to $11,200 a year.
4. Privatizing Social Security would be a disaster. Social Security is so valuable because it provides a guaranteed benefit. Privatizing Social Security would remove this guarantee and have people gamble their retirement savings in the casinos of Wall Street. If the recent financial crisis taught us anything, Wall Street is the last place where our money is safe.

For more information, check out the Strengthen Social Security Campaign.

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