President's Column - Who do you trust?

Congress and the Administration just don't get it, or they choose not to, because of contributions of business interests to their campaigns. Each week a new corporate scandal comes to light. These fraudulent and illegal business dealings have cheated thousands of workers and stockholders, and generated a lack of trust in the stock market. These are some of the same corporations that the proponents of privatization want to invest the Social Security Trust Fund.

Recently, there has been an announcement of fraud in a Forbes 500 Corporation at the rate of one per week. If the Bush Administration's newer and tougher policy of corporate investigation is true, this number could increase at an alarming level. It appears to be more of a normal operation of doing business, rather than a few "bad apples." I don't profess to understand the inner workings or subtleties of big business, but these well respected companies either under reported losses or over reported profits. Either way the CEOs and other Board members and officers made huge gains on the stock options while the stockholders and workers were left holding the bag.

If this is a fact of life, why would we want our pensions (yes, they want to go after federal employees pensions also) and our Social Security being handled by or the money invested in such companies. It's like the old Johnny Carson TV quiz show, "WHO DO YOU TRUST?"

Social Security has been working fine for 60 years and the main reason that it might run out of money is that more and more people are using it. Isn't that an odd circumstance? People are living longer and collecting their Social Security.

Analysts are divided on if it will run of money and when it might run of money. Some say that if it remained fully funded, it may never go bankrupt. But surely privatizing the Trust is not the answer. Investing the Trust fund into private stocks in this declining and untrustworthy economy would be disastrous. And finding, in the present arena, a company that is trustworthy is almost impossible.

Clearly, we need to let our Senators and Representatives know that we do not wish them to change Social Security and surely not our federal pension. I am sure they are not voting to invest their own... "not in this economy!"