Saturday Report 3/1/25 - The plan to “demolish” Social Security is underway: Who will stop them?

The Best of the Rest of the News...

A quick note about our first-Saturday-of-every-month “Ask Thom Anything” Zoom call for paid subscribers: Louise and I are joining family from Michigan for an every-two-years get-together, so I won’t be available this or next weekend. We’ll be doing it on March 15, as far as we can tell; we’ll let you known a day or three in advance as always.

— Donald Trump and JD Vance betrayed America yesterday. We haven’t seen a betrayal this severe since Benedict Arnold or the Civil War. These men have handed America and the democracies of the world over to a violent, fascist dictator. This makes Julius Rosenberg’s treason seem like a minor indiscretion. It’s more important than ever to call your representatives to let them know your opinion of this treason against democracy and America. 202-224-3121.

— Wealthy Republicans poised to write their own tax cuts. The rich Republicans serving on the two tax-writing committees, the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, are preparing to give themselves and their peers a huge tax break. Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) lays it out this way: “The wealthiest GOP members could give themselves a roughly $1.8 million annual income tax cut and their families a potential one-time estate tax cut of $22.8 million—a potential total of $24.6 million in tax cuts if they pass legislation to extend the Trump tax bill.” This is nothing new, of course; ever since the Reagan Revolution of 1981 wealthy Republicans on tax-writing committees have been taking care of themselves and their economic class in a big way. That doesn’t, however, make it any less disgusting.

— The plan to “demolish” Social Security is underway right before our eyes: who will stop them? The GOP’s plan to make Americans hate Social Security is well along in its execution. Their scheme — which they’ve been advancing in small increments for 44 years — is brilliantly simple: break the agency’s ability to respond to taxpayers, causing people to have to wait on the phone or travel for hours to stand in line for hours. As complaints mount, Republicans will then point to the “broken Social Security Administration” and pitch a Medicare Advantage-like alternative: privatized “Social Security Advantage,” run by the big New York banks who are reliable GOP donors. Once a critical mass of seniors have moved from SS to the new privatized program, they’ll then just shut down legacy Social Security, arguing that “the free marketplace has spoken.” The key to accelerating the process (Social Security’s administrative staff has been far too small for decades since Reagan first started cutting it) is a new demand from Trump’s acting Social Security Commissioner that the agency cut its workforce by fully fifty percent. Once that happens, all bets are off; the agency may not even be able to get checks out in a timely manner or process applications for new benefits, much less help SS recipients sign up or solve problems they may encounter. As Congressman John Larson noted: “This is nothing more than a backdoor benefit cut and an insult to Americans who have paid into the system and earned their Social Security—all to pay for trillions in new tax cuts for the wealthy.” Social Security Works president Nancy Altman was blunt: “Field offices around the country will close. Wait times for the 1-800 number will soar.” Larson added: “Let me be clear—laying off half of the workforce at the Social Security Administration and shuttering field offices will mean the delay, disruption, and denial of benefits.” Meanwhile, Idaho’s Republican Senator Mike Crapo blocked Bernie Sanders’ attempt this week to give all seniors on Social Security a $2400 annual raise. Noting that the raise would be paid for by having people earning more than $250,000 a year start paying Social Security taxes on all their income above that amount (which is currently exempt from Social Security taxes), Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (a co-sponsor of the legislation) said, “The Social Security Expansion Act will protect the national treasure that is Social Security by extending the trust fund’s solvency for 75 years and expanding benefits by $2,400 a year so that everyone in America can retire with the security and dignity they deserve after a lifetime of hard work.” But big banks and the morbidly rich object, and they own the GOP…

— Is the flu shot for next year getting canceled along with the developing plans for a bird flu vaccine? Is a diseased population “easier to control”? Bob Kennedy’s FDA has cancelled, for a second time, the annual meeting of scientists to determine which flu strains will be included in the flu vaccine that’ll be distributed this fall, leaving the entire system in chaos. It’s possible that American vaccine manufacturers may have to get their advice from the World Health Organization, even though the FDA has always been the gold standard of advice that’s usually followed by the WHO. Meanwhile, President Musk has started the process of killing off American development of a bird flu vaccine. Why would Trump, Musk, and Kennedy put Americans at such a public health risk that could lead to tens of thousands of deaths and economic chaos? Fascism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat muses that “a diseased population is easier to control.” Or is this another way to kneecap America that Putin put Trump up to? Inquiring minds want to know…

— How Trump and the GOP Fixed the 2026 Election — Yes, 2026. As noted this past week in a guest editorial here at Hartmann Report, Greg Palast confirms that the massive voter roll purges and rejections of mail-in ballots that got Trump into the White House in 2024 will be repeated — and expanded — in 2026 and 2028. Republican-controlled states are already busily purging millions of voters in Blue cities, since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized the practice last decade. Democrats seem blissfully oblivious to what’s been happening for the past two decades, ever since Florida Governor Jeb Bush threw roughly 90,000 valid and legal Florida voters, nearly all Black, off the rolls in 2000 because they had names that were “similar” to those of people in Texas’ prisons (a list supplied by Jeb’s brother George, then governor of Texas). You can imagine how Republicans would have reacted if Democrats had been pulling these stunts; it’s way past time for Democrats to start raising hell and increasing public awareness.

— Good luck if you’re flying. President Musk’s gutting of the Federal Aviation Administration in the same month that’s seen multiple fatal and near-fatal air accidents has led to such a critical shortage of qualified air traffic controllers that Musk had to take to his social media sewer to beg retired controllers back to work. Given that the law requires retirement for controllers at 56, this may be a challenge. In the meantime, the flying public takes the risk while Musk and his billionaire buddies fly their private jets out of smaller, less congested private airports. Being a billionaire has its advantages…

— Crazy Alert! Proof Trump runs Fox-So-Called-News. After Trump’s Cabinet Ass-Kissing Session in the White House this week, embarrassing in its North Korea-like obsequiousness, the president turned to a Fox “News” host and, apparently not realizing his mic was hot, demanded that he say the meeting was “Unbelievable” in its greatness. Pathetic doesn’t begin to describe how low we’ve fallen…