Bush's real plan for Social Security

In his efforts to change Social Security from a social insurance program to an investment program George Bush has said he wants to give people more control over their money.

In reality he wants to give Wall Street more control over American's money, with limited oversight. This was made clear on Thursday with the appointment of Rep. Christopher Cox as head of the Security and Exchange Commission.

Cox will replace William Donaldson, a moderate who worked to restore the integrity to the SEC after the short, but turbulent term of Harvey Pitt, who may be best remembered for not telling other commissioners that former FBI director William Webster, who had been selected to head a new five-member panel charged with overseeing the accounting industry, had served on the board of directors of a company accused of fraud.

Pitt decided that the allegations about the firm, U.S. Technologies, were not worth relaying to other commissioners, or to the White House, before Webster's selection, according to USA Today. Hey, why should fraud allegations be important on someone named to oversee an industry facing numerous ethical clouds.

While Donaldson worked to restore integrity to the SEC, the problem was that as the New York Times pointed out, in Republican and business circles, William H. Donaldson has been viewed as the David Souter of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a disappointingly independent choice who sided too frequently with the Democrats. (i.e. the people's voices were heard.)

On the other had Cox is view as GOP lackey, who helped to steer through the House a bill making investor lawsuits more difficult.

That measure, the Times pointed out, which Congress adopted over President Bill Clinton's veto, was hailed by business groups, which say it has reduced costly and frivolous cases. It has also been criticized by consumer and investor organizations. They say its adoption in 1995 contributed to an unaccountable climate that fostered the big accounting scandals at companies like Enron and WorldCom a few years later.

So what does this have to do with Social Security? With a flood of money potentially available to the investment community, one should expect new scandals, however those scandals won't be investigated. William Lerach, a prominent shareholder lawyer in San Diego, told the Times not to expect Cox to be an investor's friend.

"I would expect that Cox will use his authority for an across-the-board assault on investor protection," Mr. Lerach said. "In my experience with him, I found him to be virulently anti-investor and unrestrained in his desire to gut the securities laws. It's hard to think of a worse choice for the S.E.C. This is a world-class payback to the corporate world."

Guess whose going to win? Wall Street and the rich. And who will lose? Everyone else. I guess we can thank the 51% of Americans who voted for Bush for making the U.S. a worse place to live.