Thursday, February 24, 2005

The $200 million conservative disinformation campaign


Molly Ivins:
Over $200 million will be spent to convince us that we should privatize Social Security and change the rules of class-action lawsuits. In other words, they want to make us in favor of our own screwing by corporate special interests.

This has been done before, but not at this incredible level. When the insurance industry mounted a $10 million campaign in 1993 to defeat the Clinton health insurance plan (remember Harry and Louise?), no one had ever seen that kind of money spent to kill a single bill before. And now, The Washington Post reports, "Corporate America, the financial services industry, conservative think tanks, much of the Washington trade association community, the Republican Party, and GOP lobbyists and consultants are prepared to spend $200 million or more to influence the outcome of two of the toughest legislative fights in recent memory."

Bush's Social Security privatization plan is so bad (not to mention that it doesn't fix Social Security, as even he now admits), it is unclear if even a massive public relations campaign can save it. But be prepared to watch them try.

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