To the Editor:
Ivoted Republican several times as a young working mother who didn’t have time to worry about politics. After George. W. Bush got us into a war telling lies about weapons of mass destruction, I woke up. When he was re-elected, the first thing he said was “I have the mandate and I will privatize social security.” That’s when I realized the Republican Party is all about privatizing everything in order to make the wealthy richer.
Right here in Oklahoma, Governor Stitt disbanded the Oklahoma Health Care Authority who had overseen Sooner Care. They had an overhead of 4% only to replace them with three private insurance companies who charge up to 15%. I have compassion for my fellow citizens. That is why I am sharing this opinion article from The Oklahoma Observer written by Jane Hicks from Durant. During this chaotic time, we all need to wake up Sherrie McNall,
Vice-chair, McClain County Democrat Party
Trump’s Ploy: Break It Up, Sell It Off
By Jane Hicks
What do social security, education, and the postal service have in common? They are all billion-dollar enterprises coveted by corporate profiteers.
Private mail services and private schools continue to make inroads, and private interests are lobbying hard to get their hands on all of it.
Many voices more authoritative than mine have warned us about the dangers of privatizing education.
Now we face the perils of privatizing Social Security (SS). Trump and Musk, under the guise of boosting efficiency, are intentionally doing the opposite.
Can I prove it? Not while their end goals are heavily disguised, but consider how it is unfolding. Seven thousand SS civil servants have been fired.
These are the experts who answer your calls or work in a local SS office where they can help you in person. They are already top-notch and efficient. In fact, SS is a model of government efficiency that spends less than 1% of its budget on administration.
Eliminating the SS employees who interact with the public will naturally lead to frustration and service interruptions. We are now able to enroll in SS or make changes by phone. What’s coming will likely require us to get an appointment, travel to a consolidated service office (meaning fewer locations than now, wait for hours, and apply in person).
Once SS has been purged to eliminate essential citizen services, it will be much easier to raise a general outcry to “fix” it. Trump will say he tried to make SS more efficient. Because that failed, we should now turn it over to private corporations, he will claim. Billionaires and others who want to profit are greasing the wheels as we speak.
Trump is not ridding the government of waste and fraud. He is firing the people who serve the public. This is certainly one way to break the government.
Trump does not care if our food is not inspected, if public health problems multiply, if our children are split up into private schools based on race, religion, or class, if no one will deliver mail to remote areas at any price, or if the elderly are no longer secure because the Social Security system they contributed to over their careers has just “left town.”
Many of the new and proposed laws will hurt working Americans and will especially hurt women, children, the elderly, the sick, and the poor.
Legislators do not seem to consider or care about the human wreckage their laws leave behind.
They seem content if their donors and the billionaire classes are happy. The problems of children, the elderly, and the poor are just that, their problems. This administration can’t be bothered to care.
If you still care, it is time to take to the streets. Sign up for notices from the app Mobilize. Peaceful protests can still work, and they boost our standards of dignity and humanity. In crazy times, we need the mental boost of helping each other.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Jane Hicks is a retired educator living in Durant. This article was first printed in the Oklahoma Observer.)
