Before us is the most serious, well financed, and determined effort to undo the Social Security Act since its inception in 1935. For Americans to make sense of the conflicting messages on this topic, we must understand who is behind the campaign to “reform” Social Security, what this campaign aims to achieve, and how it misrepresents its goals.

The Bush administration and Wall Street lobbyists are exerting their best efforts at salesmanship. They have attempted to create a sense of urgency in the American public, using traditional marketing methods to sell us another colossal lie. Taking them up on their offer would mean cheating generations out of a program that has served our country well for decades, and bestselling author Joe Conason exposes why and how this is happening.

The Raw Deal: How the Bush Republicans Plan to Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal explains the Right’s privatization goals, Bush’s hard-fought campaign built on a stacked “study”, the corporate interests behind those efforts, the media blitz to undermine confidence in Social Security, and how we can stop the swindle.

The Raw Deal includes a preface by James Roosevelt Jr., grandson of the creator of the New Deal, and a foreword by Al Franken, New York Times bestselling author and host of Air America’s “The Al Franken Show.”

Praise for The Raw Deal

“With insight and clarity, Joe Conason shows how the longstanding conservative antipathy toward Social Security has morphed into a lavishly funded and breathtakingly dishonest conservative PR campaign. In untangling spools of GOP propaganda, The Raw Deal sets the record straight and shows what’s really at stake for all Americans in the current battle.”
—David Brock, President and CEO, Media Matters for America, and author of Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative

“Joe Conason is in top form, one of the progressive movement’s most important voices. No buzzword remains unchallenged, no dirty trick unexposed, no insipid argument left intact. This book is an important tool in the fight against the right-wing crusade against Social Security.”
—Markos Moulitsas, Founder, DailyKos

“Joe Conason has done it again. When Joe casts his eye on the cadres of the right, they invariably emerge battered, with their arguments filleted, their sources of money exposed, and their real motives laid bare.”
—Michael Tomasky, Executive Editor, The American Prospect

“Joe Conason is one of our great chroniclers of the right-wing propaganda machine …Let this book be your x-ray machine to see through the president’s lies about Social Security.”
—Josh Marshall, talkingpointsmemo.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

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Foreword by Al Franken
Preface by James Roosevelt, Jr., grandson of FDR

Columnist Joe Conason Asks:
“WHAT’S REALLY BEHIND SOCIAL SECURITY PRIVATIZATION?”

Why the Right Wing Wants the New Deal Destroyed and What They’re Doing to Make It Happen.

George Bush and the GOP will soon resume their campaign against Social Security, as we know it. As bestselling author and New York Observer columnist Joe Conason writes, the new Social Security proposal is merely the latest attack in a seventy-year campaign to destroy the advances of the New Deal. In THE RAW DEAL: How the Bush Republicans Plan to Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal (PoliPointPress: October 19, 2005; $11.00 paperback), Conason reveal the machinations of the think tanks, front organizations, town hall meetings, and the public fronts for conservative ideologues and financial institutions that are intent on destroying the most successful federal program in U.S. history.

The conservative campaign against Social Security dates back to 1936, when Kansas Republican Alf Landon ran against Franklin D. Roosevelt, denouncing the program as a hoax. The Republican platform that year predicted the Fund would only have enough to pay retirement benefits to one-third of the elderly population, dismissing the entire program as nothing but the government’s promise to pay.

Now the Bush administration claims they are trying to save Social Security, but their doomsday prophecies for the programs funding date back to the earliest corporate detractor. In an effort to create the illusion of broad support, Social Security privateers have created “Astroturf” organizations, patently phony “grassroots” groups engineered by political consultants and direct-mail companies. Because conservatives realize that their policies will never be adopted if their only visible promoters are wealthy white men, they have invested millions in the creation and promotion of organizations that seem to speak for more popular constituencies, including women, senior citizens, young people, and racial and ethnic minorities.

For example, Project 21 (a right-wing African American organization), which has only a few dozen members total, often gets equal billing in television debates with the NAACP, with its membership of over half a million. In July 2004, Mychal Massie, a black conservative affiliated with Project 21, was scheduled to appear on C-Span’s Washington Journal. However, Massie was unable to make it to the studio because of a flat tire. David Almasi, the executive director of Project 21, was the only employee available to replace Massie. When Almasi arrived, the host was shocked to find out that he was white. To create the illusion of intellectual support, the administration depends heavily on think tanks, especially the conservative Heritage Foundation and the libertarian Cato Institute. Conason shows that although these groups claim intellectual freedom, they are heavily indebted to the corporations and radical right-wing groups responsible for their funding. A myriad of corporate investors and business groups would profit handsomely if Social Security were to be privatized. They include the National Association of Manufacturers, Business Roundtable, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Coalition for the Modernization and Protection of America’s Social Security (COMPASS) and the Alliance for Worker Retirement Security.

Privatization would create a bonanza for the financial industry, with as many as 130 million new investment accounts that would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Investment firms could expect to reap nearly a trillion dollars in profit from privatized Social Security accounts over the next several decades. The prospect of siphoning enormous fees and commissions from Social Security revenue explains why Wall Street firms, investment banks, insurance companies, and stock brokerages have invested millions in the privatization campaign. Republicans have even shamelessly suggested that FDR favored privatizing Social Security.

In the preface of The Raw Deal, James Roosevelt, Jr., grandson of FDR, addresses the original meaning of Social Security, and condemns the use of his grandfather’s name to destroy the program he worked so hard to build. In a world where image trumps substance, Joe Conason has exposed the real facts for us. Behind the sound bites and rhetoric about saving Social Security lies a well-funded conspiracy to gut a program supported by almost all working people. It takes someone with the courage, convictions, and connections of Conason to help us understand how to stop the swindle before it is too late.

ABOUT AUTHOR
JOE CONASON is the bestselling author of Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How it Distorts the Truth and co-author of The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton. National correspondent for The New York Observer and investigative editor for The American Prospect, Conason writes a weekly online journal for Salon.com, and his writing and reporting have appeared in Harper’s, The Guardian, The Nation, The New Republic, The Village Voice, and many other publications. He is the winner of the New York Press Clubs Byline Award. He is well-respected political commentator, appearing frequently on television and radio. He lives in New York City.

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THE RAW DEAL: How the Bush Republicans Plan to Destroy Social Security and the Legacy of the New Deal
PoliPointPress, Distributor: Ingram Publisher Services
Publication Date: October 19, 2005 $11.00 paperback original,
8 b&w photos 160 pages, 5×7, ISBN: 0-9760621-2-7