Meg, Meg, Meg. You'd think that your good fortune, or should I say, BIG fortune, would make you more grateful and more compassionate towards those who weren't as lucky to be inducted into the gated community of the financial oligarchy. If you truly valued dollars, why spend hundreds of millions of them trying to win the governorship of California, a post from which you would then take away the jobs, salaries, and pensions of low-paid workers in public service.
A 401 K? A nice supplement for personal savings, AFTER basic retirement needs have been taken care of--NOT a substitute for a true pension. Yes, the private sector has whittled down most pension plans in its rapacious quest for greater CEO payouts. But adding another wrong in the public sector will not make a right, though it will feed the economic lust of the right. Rather than threaten a functioning safety net, we should be reinstituting steep progressive taxation for the rich so that ALL employees, public and private, can look forward to a safe and healthy retirement.
Instead, you want to force us to "invest" in a 401K. In other words, to take the small amount of money we earn through our labor (and not via money making money) and hand it over to the same Wall Street stock mavens that have impoverished us in the past 3 decades. Oh, good, beat us again. You need our dollars so that your investments can continue to grow in Wall Street's pyramids. Meanwhile, the pittances of savings that the average worker has been forced to channel to retirement investments has been eaten up by the same Wall Street manipulators that are asking for more.
Keep us on the treadmill, working desperately for longer hours with greater responsibilities and lower salaries until we reach 65 and drop dead, whichever is sooner. Add some more economic and psychological stress to those struggling to survive so that we die in our 50's--think of all the health care savings you can then channel to your corporate "friends".
Finally, ensure that if we do stumble and fall, that we will not be greeted with a soft landing. Remove our Medicaid/Cal, public assistance, disability services, etc," How can we feed you and your ilk if we are not willing or able to keep rowing at the oars.
Jerry Brown is no FDR, but Meg Whitman is W/Cheney. It's critical she doesn't get a foot in OUR door this November and that all of us in California vote AGAINST Meg Whitman by voting for Governor Brown.
