The Respectfully Republican Conversation

suzfive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iivL4c_3pck His comment to Joe the Plumber isn't anything new - where is the MSM?

I think it will be a long night on November 4.

IBC - hope Cam is doing better this morning.

Funny story - dh is from Bangladesh and he was talking to a cousin over there yesterday - there is Obama mania going on there. They think that he will open the gates and give everyone a visa to come here. My dh said if his economic plan would go through - all the poor would want to come here to get in on all the freebies but the brains will go elsewhere.

Rosemary44

This poll is suppose to be the most accurate of them all: 

http://www.tipponline.com/

Notice the spread is much closer then we're being told. 

ibcspouse

Suzfive  thank you, doing better, last nite was up-chuck free..back to almost normal BP

Obama's redistribution of wealth audio from 2001.  He speaks of Economic Justice thru redistribution of wealth.  So now a whole new word I need to learn to spell, is it Comrad or comrade, do you capitalize it. 

Obama's buddies in Chicago, Rev Wright, Iva Carruthers, Louis Farrakan, Dorothy Tillman, and add in John Conyers and what you get is economic justice thru reparations in wealth redistribution.  Barney Franks states cut Defense Spending by 25%, it is not a question of higher taxes it is a question of when.

Rosemary44

IBC,

Why don't you just do the spellcheck button?  

What I don't understand about lowering defense spending is:  How can they do that with 2 wars on?  It's bad enough that we don't have enough troops in Afghanistan, but are they not going to supply them?  What in the world are the dems talking about?  McCain said he's going to do a lot of cuts, but defense wasn't one of them.  Of course not.  Geez, this will be a total mess if the Dems win this.

Sounds like Cam had a good night last night.  I'm happy to hear it for you both.

ibcspouse

Rosemary, if I use the spellcheck button, will I lose my personality?

Rosemary44

ibc,

Hmmm, I don't think so.  Spellchecks can be enlightening.  It gives us notice if we need to get our vitamin levels checked.

Here's a podcast about why Obama's taxing plans actually hurt the middle class.  That's what we all need, more fiscal pain:

http://www.ibdeditorial.com/Podcasts.aspx

» 10/16/08: Tom McArdle on how Obama's tax "cuts" would actually hurt the middle class

saluki

I remember Shirley asking why the media is mum about the Columbia years..................Edward Said completed the circle...........

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjY4YzdhMDBkZGQ3ZmU2MTUzYjdkMzc5ZjUzYmViZWM=

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjY4YzdhMDBkZGQ3ZmU2MTUzYjdkMzc5ZjUzYmViZWM=

Rosemary44

"As Diamond observes, in a 2006 speech in Venezuela, with Leftist strongman Hugo Chavez looking on, Ayers exhorted: "Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!"

There's that word again.  Didn't we hear it being used by Powell in his glowing endorsement of Obama last week?  It just keeps popping up all over the place surrounding Obama.  Interesting.

saluki

Can't get the link to work--here is the article from NRO

October 07, 2008, 3:30 p.m.

Why Won’t Obama Talk About Columbia?
The years he won’t discuss may explain the Ayers tie he keeps lying about.

By Andrew C. McCarthy

Barack Obama does not want to talk about Columbia. Not even to his good friends at the New York Times, who’ve so reliably helped him bleach away his past — a past neck-deep in the hard Left radicalism he has gussied up but never abandoned.

Why? I suspect it is because Columbia would shred his thin post-partisan camouflage.

You might think the Times would be more curious. After all, the Democrats’ presidential nominee has already lied to the Gray Lady about the origins of his relationship with Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. Back in May, in a cheery profile of Obama’s early Chicago days, the Times claimed (emphasis is mine):

    Mr. Obama also fit in at Hyde Park’s fringes, among university faculty members like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, unrepentant members of the radical Weather Underground that bombed the United States Capitol and the Pentagon to protest the Vietnam War. Mr. Obama was introduced to the couple in 1995 at a meet-and-greet they held for him at their home, aides said.

Now look, anyone who gave five seconds of thought to that passage smelled a rat. Ayers and Dohrn are passionate radical activists who lived as fugitives for a decade. There’s no way they held a political coming-out party for someone who was unknown to them. Obviously, they already knew him well enough by then to feel very comfortable. They might have been sympathetic to a relative stranger, but sponsoring such a gathering in one’s living room is a strong endorsement.

And now, even the Times now knows it’s been had. In this past weekend’s transparent whitewashing of the Obama/Ayers tie, the paper claimed that the pair first met earlier in 1995, “at a lunchtime meeting about school reform in a Chicago skyscraper[.]” That storyline is preposterous too, but it is also a marked revision of the paper’s prior account (which, naturally, reporter Scott Shane fails to mention).

Why the change? The tacit concession was forced by Stanley Kurtz and Steve Diamond — whom the Times chooses not to acknowledge but who hover over Shane’s sunny narrative like a dark cloud.

Despite all manner of stonewalling by Obama, Ayers and their allies, these commentators have doggedly pursued information about the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. That’s the $150+ million “education reform” piggy bank substantially controlled in the nineties by Ayers and Obama, who doled out tens of millions of dollars to Leftist radicals — radicals who, like their patrons, understood that control over our institutions, and especially our schools, was a surer and less risky way to spread their revolution than blowing up buildings and mass-murdering American soldiers. As Diamond observes, in a 2006 speech in Venezuela, with Leftist strongman Hugo Chavez looking on, Ayers exhorted: “Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!”

Be clear on that much: Whether clothed as a terrorist or an academic, Ayers has made abundantly clear in his public statements, both before and after he established a working relationship and mutual admiration society with Obama, that he remains a revolutionary fueled by hatred of the United States. And while Obama now ludicrously pleads ignorance about Ayers’s terrorism — the terrorism that made the unabashed Ayers an icon of the Left — understand that this rabid anti-Americanism is the common denominator running through Obama’s orbit of influences.

Yes, Ayers is blunter than Obama. As he so delicately told the Times, America makes him “want to puke.” The smoother Obama is content to say our society needs fundamental “change.” But what they’re talking about is not materially different.

Such sentiments should make Obama unelectable. So, when it comes to his own radical moorings, Obama is engaged in classic liar behavior. He changes his story as the facts change — and the burden is always on you to dig up the facts, not on him to come clean. Yesterday, asked to comment on the Ayers relationship, David Axelrod, Obama’s top political adviser, hilariously chirped, “There’s no evidence that they’re close.” Translation: Get back to us when you can prove more damaging information — until then, we don’t need to further refine our perjury.

And then Axelrod gave us still more lies: “There’s no evidence that Obama in any way subscribed to any of Ayers’ views.”

Oh yeah? Well, Mr. Axelrod, how do you explain Obama’s breathless endorsement of Ayers’s 1997 Leftist polemic on the criminal-justice system, A Kind and Just Parent? As Stanley Kurtz has recounted, Ayers’s book is a radical indictment of American society: We, not the criminals, are responsible for the violent crime that plagues our cities; even the most vicious juvenile offenders should not be tried as adults; prisons should eventually be replaced by home detention; American justice is comparable to South Africa under Apartheid. Obama’s reaction? He described the book as “a searing and timely account” — a take even the Times concedes was a “rave review.”

Obama and Ayers shared all kinds of views. That is why they worked so well together at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), funding the likes of Mike Klonsky, a fellow SDS and Maoist associate of Ayers who, as Steve Diamond relates, used to host a “social justice” blog on Obama’s campaign website. With Obama heading the board of directors that approved expenditures and Ayers, the mastermind running its operational arm, hundreds of thousands of CAC dollars poured into the “Small Schools Workshop” — a project begun by Ayers and run by Klonsky to spur the revolution from the ground up.

Precisely because they shared the same views, Obama and Ayers also worked comfortably together on the board of the Woods Fund. There, they doled out thousands of dollars to Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity Church to promote its Marxist “black liberation theology.” Moreover, they underwrote the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) founded by Rashid Khalidi, a top apologist for Yasser Arafat. As National Review’s David Pryce-Jones notes, Khalidi once directed WAFA, the terrorist PLO’s news agency. Then, like Ayers, he repackaged himself as an academic who rails at American policy. The AAAN, which supports driver’s licenses and public welfare benefits for illegal aliens, holds that the establishment of Israel was an illegitimate “catastrophe.”

Khalidi, who regards Israel as a “racist” “apartheid” state, supports Palestinian terror strikes against Israeli military targets. It’s little surprise that he should be such a favorite of Ayers, the terrorist for whom “racism” and “apartheid” trip off the tongue as easily as “pass the salt.”

And it’s no surprise that the like-minded Obama would be a fan. Khalidi, after all, has mastered the Arafat art of posing as a moderate before credulous Westerners while (as Martin Kramer documents) scalding America’s “Zionist lobby” when addressing Arabic audiences. The Obama who decries “bitter” Americans “cling[ing] to guns or religion” when he’s in San Francisco but morphs into a God-fearing Second Amendment enthusiast when he’s in Pennsylvania — like the Obama who pummels NAFTA before labor union supporters but has advisers quietly assure the Canadians not to worry about such campaign cant — surely appreciates the craft.

Obama and Ayers not only demonstrated their shared view of Khalidi by funding him. They also gave glowing testimonials at a farewell dinner when Khalidi left the University of Chicago for Columbia’s greener pastures. That would be the same Columbia from which Obama graduated in 1983.

Khalidi was leaving to become director of Columbia’s Middle East Institute, assuming a professorship endowed in honor of another Arafat devotee, the late Edward Said. A hero of the Left who consulted with terrorist leaders (including Hezbollah’s Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah) and was once photographed hurling rocks at Israelis from the Lebanese border, Said was exposed by researcher Justus Reid Weiner as a fraud who had created a fictional account of his childhood, the rock on which he built his Palestinian grievance mythology.

We know precious little about Obama’s Columbia years, but the Los Angeles Times has reported that he studied under Said. In and of itself, that is meaningless: Said was a hotshot prof and hundreds of students took his comparative-lit courses. But Obama plainly maintained some sort of tie with Said — a photo making the Internet rounds shows Obama conversing with the great man himself at a 1998 Arab American community dinner in Chicago, where the Obamas and Saids were seated together.

Said had a wide circle of radical acquaintances. That circle clearly included Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. When they came out of hiding in the early 1980s (while Obama was attending Columbia), Ayers took education courses at Bank Street College, adjacent to Columbia in Morningside Heights — before earning his doctorate at Columbia’s Teachers College in 1987.

Said was so enamored of Ayers that he commended the unrepentant terrorist’s 2001 memoir, Fugitive Days — the book in which the haughty Ayers brags about his Weatherman past — with this glowing dust-jacket blurb:

    What makes Fugitive Days unique is its unsparing detail and its marvelous human coherence and integrity. Bill Ayers's America and his family background, his education, his political awakening, his anger and involvement, his anguished re-emergence from the shadows: all these are rendered in their truth without a trace of nostalgia or “second thinking.” For anyone who cares about the sorry mess we are in, this book is essential, indeed necessary, reading.

Sorry mess, indeed. For his part, Ayers is at least equally enthralled by Said, of whom, even in death, Ayers says “[t]here is no one better positioned … to offer advice on the conduct of intellectual life[,]” than the man who was “over the last thirty-five years, the most passionate, eloquent, and clear-eyed advocate for the rights of the Palestinian people.”

After they left Columbia, both Obama and Ayers went to Chicago: Obama to become a “community organizer” (the director of the Developing Communities Project, an offshoot of the Gamaliel Foundation dedicated to Saul Alinsky’s principles for radicalizing society); Ayers, two years later, to teach at the University of Illinois. Diamond details how they both became embroiled in a major education controversy that resulted in 1988 reform legislation.

Ayers’s father, Tom Ayers, a prominent Chicago businessman, was also deeply involved in the reform effort. Interestingly, in 1988, while Obama and Ayers toiled on the same education agenda, Bernadine Dohrn worked as an intern at the prestigious Chicago law firm of Sidley Austin — even though she could not be admitted to the bar due to her contempt conviction for refusing to cooperate in a terrorist investigation. How could that happen? It turns out that Sidley was the longtime outside counsel for Tom Ayers’s company, Commonwealth Edison. That is, Ayers’ father had pull at the firm and successfully pressed for the hiring of his daughter-in-law.

The next summer, though he had gone off to Harvard Law School (another impressive accomplishment he prefers not to discuss), Obama returned to the Windy City to work as an intern at Sidley. Dohrn was gone by then to teach at Northwestern. A coincidence? Maybe (Diamond doesn’t think so), but that’s an awful lot of coincidences — and a long trail of common people, places and experiences — for people who purportedly didn’t know each other yet managed to end up as partners in significant financial and political ventures.

In short, Bill Ayers and Barack Obama moved in the same circles, were driven by the same cause, and admired the same radicals all the way from Morningside Heights to Hyde Park. They ended up publicly admiring each other, promoting each other’s work, sitting on the same boards, and funding the same Leftist agitators.

You could conclude, as I do, that it all goes back to a formative time in his life that Obama refuses to discuss. Or you could buy the fairy tale that Bill Ayers first encountered an unknown, inexperienced, third-year associate from a small Chicago law-firm over coffee in 1995 and suddenly decided Barack Obama was the perfect fit to oversee the $150 million pot of gold Ayers hoped would underwrite his revolution.
National Review Online - http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjY4YzdhMDBkZGQ3ZmU2MTUzYjdkMzc5ZjUzYmViZWM=
 

Anonymous

I'm on only a minute. 

You know what really scares me.  People who are for Obama WILL NOT listen to anything you have to say.  It's like a cult following.  There are some who do not really like either choice, but the most I can get out of them is, we don't want another four years of Bush, or Bush has damaged our reputation, or they blame all of this economic crises on him.

I tell them McCain isn't Bush.  That Obama wants to take their money and give ot to me.  I told my dd who is an attorney who just recently opened her own practice with another attorney that when she starting make $250,000 and more she's going to pay HIGHER taxes.  I asked her did she think if it was fair that she had nothing and worked her way up to become successful to give her money to people who have not done the same.

So, I can tell you.  I scared to death that this man will get in office..ruin our military..no wonder Biden said something about...you're not going to agree with what he does..we need your support...not financially...but your support..you're going to say..whoooo, what's he thinking/doing...Of course that's not quotes, but you get my drift.  And then, when a well respected radio show host asks Biden legitimate questions the Obama team calls FOUL!

There's not one darned thing we can do to change whatever's going to happen.  Don't you know that Obama wanted people to vote early because we may just find out more than he wants us to know.  And, the most frustrating part is most people do not listen, search, research...they just vote on an empty suited man who speaks eloquently. 

I AM VERY SCARED..

Shirley

Rosemary44

Pam,

Are you doing your penance on earth or something?  Ok, I saw a photo of Denver with a gazillion people there waiting for the annointed one to speak.  I don't get it?  What are they seeing?  Some type of crown or something that we the unenlightened can't see?  Does it have sparkling diamonds?  What? 

All I actually hear is his plans to get America back into the 20th century,  their glee of raising taxes on the rich, their happiness with higher unemployment numbers.  That's all I hear.  What's wrong with us?  I didn't like the days of Carter, I don't want us to repeat them.  I don't want to take down our nukes, they comfort me.  I want to give armor to our guys and gals in our wars.  That comforts me too.  I want our guys and gals out of harm's way and patrolling the borders.  I like McCain's plans for that.  He's the only one who will talk about the wars. 

Well ladies and gents, there is something going on that we can't see or hear.  Thank our lucky stars we don't see it.

ibcspouse

Just watched BO's speech.  Can't we eliminate the middleman and just elect a bumper sticker stuck to a TelePrompter.

The man actually said of McCain "if you don't have a record,....'

BTW...Cam will be released in the morning, so will be headed home.

ibcspouse

Sorry I can't get this to link but goes along with suluki's post 

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/10/the_saidkhalidiobama_connectio.html

Anonymous

IBC, good, positive thoughts going out to you and Cam.  I know the both of you are ready to get back home and into your own bed.

I also listened to that speech Obama gave.  I also heard...if you don't have a record...do you realized he steals McCain's lines.  He also said he'd go through all the programs and see which ones to do away with..something like that.  It was very painful for me to have to listen.  The "record" thing really caught me ear. 

He talks and talks and says nothing.  He's given more free air time because McCain gets to the point and doesn't keep blowing hot air.  Oh, to have such eloquence!

Shirley

Harley44

You guys,  I have been off these boards for a few days, and now I am so far behind, I'll never catch up!!

IBC,

I'm praying for Cam, and glad to read that she is doing better.

I just read here where someone (I forget WHO) said that throughout the primaries and even now, Obama (and all his supporters) just keep saying that they want CHANGE....   well, the LAST time the American people wanted CHANGE, they got BILL CLINTON!!!     Case closed.

Shirley

Hi.  I think that semi colons are used when you want to join two sentences together, but they are really not related.   Something like:

I really love the beach; I love the feel of the sand between my toes and the sun on my face. 

Heck... if that is really how to use the semi colon, we could just get rid of them and use either a period or an !  

...edited to add:

I did read through these posts, and now I just have to add that I am ALSO SCARED, Shirley!  You are SO right...  the B.O. supporters are really like some kind of brain-washed cult!  They  just hang on his every word, and they never have an answer when we just ask a simple question, like WHY are you voting for B.O., or What has he done, while he's been in office?, there are NO answers.

I'm really scared... 

ibcspouse

Thanks Ultra Classic, I mean Harley

I am silent somewhat tonight because as much as I enjoy you ladies, Cam is awakeand feeling better, so I don't have to go on line to be charmed by smart women. 

Shirley, it will be great to get back in my own bed, after this folding chair, any bed.

Rosemary44

I don't think we have anything to worry about.  The polls are tightening up, and people are getting that uneasy feeling.  We really don't know enough about this guy to put him in the White House.  By contrast, McCain is an open book.

Three things that have happened to bring home that uneasy feeling, Joe the Plumber and Obama's reply to him.  Biden worrying about an Obama presidency that would bring on a test.,  and the dems going after Joe the Plumber trying to destroy him,  and now the reporter who dared to ask Biden questions.  That is scary.  It makes Nixon look like a pussycat.  Obama is making his own enemies list.  They are definitely taking a page out of the Nixon handbook of how to deal with enemies.  I don't think we're ready for that again.

ibcspouse

Harley

You have to admit that Harley44 is much better name than Bayerische Motoren Werke44.

Rosemary,

I hope you are right.  The Great Society of the 60's created a multi-generational sub-sect of our population that became enslaved by welfare.  It destroyed families by rewarding out of wedlock children.  It created gang violence by removing a positive working role model from the household, teaching young people that they were owed a check, or as the name of the programs suggest, were entitled to money without work.  It helped destroy the education system by removing the incentive to better oneself and encouraged parents to allow a child to fail.  If the child could fail enough times, then a learning disability check was far greater than an ADC check. Many ills of our times can be traced directly to social programs of the 60's. 

If Obama is elected he will expand that sub-sect to a point that the producers of our economy will not be able to carry the load.  Redistribution of wealth, is redistribution of poverty.  One cannot reward non-production and expect production to grow. 

Daffodil

My mouth is shut.

However, good wishes to Cam and her WonderSpouse for a safe trip to Home Sweet Home.

ibcspouse

Thank you Daffodil,

She is asleep now,  and the term is Dunderspouse.

Daffodil

I have no doubt that there may be times when that term is appropriate, but not during these days of stress. My own DH is appalled when I tell him of some husbands' callousness.

He is, however, planning to give me a stripper pole for Christmas...............

I hope he isn't expecting extra income to make up for redistribution!

ibcspouse

I gave my wife a stripper pole one time.  Came home early from work one day and found her and her friends with handfuls of dollar bills and this nice young policeman with a boom box.  I didn't know police uniforms were held together by velcro.  Must be a safety thing.

Anonymous

Hey, Harley.  How's it going.  Have you found any temps yet?

I find this interesting. 

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2008/10/surprise-obama-was-affiliated-with.html  

I don't know why the print is big.  I've been wanting to do this.  I copy and pasted and POOF, it's large print!  Wow, this is really nice.  Easy reading for those who are past 40, or 50, and maybe 60. 

When you come to the link, page 122, you can click on it and there are some excerpts of Obama's audio book. However, he as purged some things out of the audio, but the narrator fills it in.

Gateway Pundit

Where Hope Finally Made a Comeback.Wednesday, October 08, 2008Surprise!... Obama Was Affiliated With National Socialist Party Throughout Most of the 1990's! ...Update: Proof No Quarters has the latest on America's most liberal senator.
Obama's ties with Marxists are more extensive than previously reported:Barack Obama was an active participant in the 1990s, and a direct political beneficiary, of the Chicago New Party and, importantly, the Chicago DSA, a group of socialists affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America.The connections are extensively documented by Matthew Weaver   Of course,Obama has a long history of relationships with Marxists.
His first mentor in high school was noted Communist Frank Marshall Davis.
He admitted he attended socialist conferences during his college years in his first book, "Dreams From My Father", page 122:

"Political discussions, the kind that at Occidental had once seemed so intense and purposeful, came to take on the flavor of the socialist conferences that I sometimes attended at Cooper Union or the African cultural fairs that took place in Harlem or Brooklyn during the summers-a few of the many diversions that New York had to offer, like going to a foreign film or ice-skating at the Rockefeller Center."Obama also wrote that he selected his friends carefully, the more Marxist and radical the better, page 100:

"To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist Professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets."And, don't forget Obama's pastor, mentor and father figure of 20 years, G-D AmeriKKKa Jeremiah Wright, who brought the black liberation socialist theology to the alter.

Politically Drunk on Power has more on Obama's socialist recent past.

UPDATE: Thomas Lifson at American Thinkerdescribes Obama as a man groomed by an older generation of radical leftists for insertion into the American political process.
That's frightening!

UPDATE 2:Obama signed up with the Marxists in 1995.

UPDATE 3:Here is proof-- a screen grab from the Marxist web page promoting candidate Barack Obama in 1996:

Power Line has posted another screengrab. posted by Gateway Pundit at 10/08/2008 06:18:00 AM 

Anonymous

HAVE YOU HEARD ABOUT THIS?

http://www.workforce.com/section/00/article/25/83/58.php  

House Democrats Contemplate Abolishing 401(k) Tax Breaks

Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation's $3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive.

---

October 16, 2008 House Democrats Contemplate Abolishing 401(k) Tax Breaks Powerful House Democrats are eyeing proposals to overhaul the nation's $3 trillion 401(k) system, including the elimination of most of the $80 billion in annual tax breaks that 401(k) investors receive.

House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-California, and Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Washington, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee's Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, are looking at redirecting those tax breaks to a new system of guaranteed retirement accounts to which all workers would be obliged to contribute.

A plan by Teresa Ghilarducci, professor of economic-policy analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York, contains elements that are being considered. She testified last week before Miller's Education and Labor Committee on her proposal. 

At that hearing, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Peter Orszag, testified that some $2 trillion in retirement savings has been lost over the past 15 months.

Under Ghilarducci's plan, all workers would receive a $600 annual inflation-adjusted subsidy from the U.S. government but would be required to invest 5 percent of their pay into a guaranteed retirement account administered by the Social Security Administration. The money in turn would be invested in special government bonds that would pay 3 percent a year, adjusted for inflation.

The current system of providing tax breaks on 401(k) contributions and earnings would be eliminated.

"I want to stop the federal subsidy of 401(k)s," Ghilarducci said in an interview. "401(k)s can continue to exist, but they won't have the benefit of the subsidy of the tax break."

Under the current 401(k) system, investors are charged relatively high retail fees, Ghilarducci said.

"I want to spend our nation's dollar for retirement security better. Everybody would now be covered" if the plan were adopted, Ghilarducci said.

She has been in contact with Miller and McDermott about her plan, and they are interested in pursuing it, she said.

"This [plan] certainly is intriguing," said Mike DeCesare, press secretary for McDermott.

"That is part of the discussion," he said.

While Miller stopped short of calling for Ghilarducci's plan at the hearing last week, he was clearly against continuing tax breaks as they currently exist.

Savings rate
"The savings rate isn't going up for the investment of $80 billion," he said. "We have to start to think about ... whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that's not generating what we now say it should."

"From where I sit that's just crazy," said John Belluardo, president of Stewardship Financial Services Inc. in Tarrytown, New York. "A lot of people contribute to their 401(k)s because of the match of the employer," he said. Belluardo's firm does not manage assets directly.

Higher-income employers provide matching funds to employee plans so that they can qualify for tax benefits for their own defined-contribution plans, he said.

"If the tax deferral goes away, the employers have no reason to do the matches, which primarily help people in the lower income brackets," Belluardo said.

"This is a battle between liberalism and conservatism," said Christopher Van Slyke, a partner in the La Jolla, California, advisory firm Trovena, which manages $400 million. "People are afraid because their accounts are seeing some volatility, so Democrats will seize on the opportunity to attack a program where investors control their own destiny," he said.

The Profit Sharing/401(k) Council of America in Chicago, which represents employers that sponsor defined-contribution plans, is "staunchly committed to keeping the employee benefit system in America voluntary," said Ed Ferrigno, vice president in the Washington office.

"Some of the tenor [of the hearing last week] that the entire system should be based on the activities of the markets in the last 90 days is not the way to judge the system," he said.

No legislative proposals have been introduced and Congress is out of session until next year.

However, most political observers believe that Democrats are poised to gain seats in both the House and the Senate, so comments made by the mostly Democratic members who attended the hearing could be a harbinger of things to come.

Advice at issue
In addition to tax breaks for 401(k)s, the issue of allowing investment advisors to provide advice for 401(k) plans was also addressed at the hearing. Rep. Robert Andrews, D-New Jersey, was critical of Department of Labor proposals made in August that would allow advisors to give individual advice if the advice was generated using a computer model.

Andrews characterized the proposals as "loopholes" and said that investment advice should not be given by advisors who have a direct interest in the sale of financial products.

The Pension Protection Act of 2006 contains provisions making it easier for investment advisors to give individualized counseling to 401(k) holders.

"In retrospect that doesn't seem like such a good idea to me," Andrews said. "This is an issue I think we have to revisit. I frankly think that the compromise we struck in 2006 is not terribly workable or wise," he said.

On Thursday, October 9, the Department of Labor hastily scheduled a public hearing on the issue in Washington for Tuesday, October 21.

The agency does not frequently hold public hearings on its proposals.

Filed by Sara Hansard of Investment News, a sister publication of Workforce Management. To comment, e-mail editors@workforce.com.

Workforce Management's online news feed is now available via Twitter.

 

Daffodil

"I want to spend our nation's dollar for retirement security better. Everybody would now be covered" if the plan were adopted, Ghilarducci said.

Who is "everybody"????

(Gag me with a spoon: late-night comics!!! If they have their way, whom will they crucify for the next 4-8 years?)

Daffodil

Link sent to me tonight from Jewish Republican friend:

http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/2545716/is-america-really-going-to-do-this.thtml

Rosemary44

You see the 401K plan the Dems have cooked up?   Another way to access free money.  Our money.  We will have to buy treasury paper and get only 3% income.  Meanwhile, they use our money as they please, the same way they've been pilliaging and looting social security funds.

Another gov't take-over plan, for our own good.  Could you only imagine what the stock market loss would be if we take all our 401K money out of it and buy treasury bills instead?  3% interest doesn't even cover the cost we have to endure for inflation every year.  If it wasn't for the stock market and some very good investments, most of us couldn't retire today. 

I do believe that this plan alone will cook the democrats gooses and if people aren't paying any attention, then they deserve the 3% they're about to get.  It will be adjusted for inflation, big deal.  Morons. This is exactly what we need, more democrats in office.  Just pile them on and we'll see what else they come up with to get at our money.  3% interest.  Give me a break!  Buy a  bigger kitchen table, your parents are coming to live with you.  Or, your going to live with your kids.

Rosemary44

You know, over the years I have heard some really dunderheaded plans coming out of Washington, but taking away the 401K plans is about the dumbest plan I ever heard.  Are they trying to get retirees of our future into welfare plans?  Are they trying to make the richest country in the world the poorest for our future retirees?  Are they plain nuts?

I can only tell you that if we put our money into a 3% account over these last 36 years, I'd have hardly nothing to retire on today.  Are they also taking away the matching funds from the companies?  I can't even read that article anymore to see.  We wouldn't have all the stock we purchased over the years, that split and doubled and split and doubled and some even paid dividends on top of that.

The problem is we won't have enough republicans in office to stop this from happening.  McCain will veto it in a heartbeat, that goes without saying.  This is so beyond the pale of reason it's hard for me to even talk about it.  That's how stupid it is.

Harley44

IBC,

too funny!  You are SO right!  Maybe that is why I REALLY LOVE the Harley better than the BMW... It is a better login name for me!  Yesterday, dh and I took a bike ride to Charleston, and I almost FROZE, because the temp. went WAY DOWN, on the ride home!  DOH!  I forgot that we have HEATED seats!   Those crazy Germans think of everything!

Sending more warm wishes for you and Cam, hoping that she continues to improve, and do well.

Shirley,

There are NO jobs available through the temp agency, but I spoke to the rep there yesterday, and she said that things usually pick up in January, only if B.O. is elected, maybe not... 
I must be crazy, because I am thinking of taking a p/t temp sales job, for the Christmas season.  I would be working Saturdays...  but, honestly, I'm getting worried about our finances...  My dh said that if I want to continue to play, and go out to dinner, and go shopping, I will have to work.  It is SO not fair!!   Well, maybe B.O. will send ME some money, so I won't have to work!!

Rosemary44

Our prayers are being answered. 

http://www.tipponline.com/

We'll be able to sleep at night if it keeps getting lower.