No Shock: Media silent on what the coming Social Security cuts will mean to the average person. (gee, I wonder why?…maybe ’cause the media is a bunch of Corporate/Govt propagandists)
V.I. Muslim women must take off headscarf to get drivers’ licenses.
All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love. — Leo Tolstoy
I am not a ‘foodie‘ in the least and yet whenever I get an email alert from this writer’s blog I break out in a grin. Recipe for a simple Christmas…another dandy recipe and slice of life.
Support for healthcare repeal at 60%.
Uh Oh: Home Prices Retreat.
Uh Oh2: Oil Prices Attack
Thanks for nuthin, douchebag: Richard Chamberlain urges gay actors to stay in closet.
Oh The Horror, The Horror! Karaoke version of Auld Lang Syne…alarming arrangement, singer that may cause nerve damage, black and white images of Occidentals looking at a tiny rabbit, nuff said…
In defense of Richard Chamberlain you have to take his age into account. “Coming out” would have derailed his career 50 years ago and he would have been denied it because of the “stigma” attached. His career would have been over before it began.
However, I disagree with his premise that gay actors should just continue to remain in the closet. Having more and more voices being heard is just what this culture needs to finally accept and and adapt to a biological event.
My hope is that someday down the line sexual orientation would not matter in the least in whatever field of endeavor a person chooses to pursue. The more who reveal themselves the better. After awhile it will bear as much relevance as those who are born either righthanded or left. A shrug of the shoulders and a “who cares” attitude should be the goal.
I may not live long enough to see this in my lifetime but it is coming for sure!
Obama is aiding the Republicans in their 75-year long goal of destroying Social Security; he did that when he made Social Security part of the bargaining over the federal budget. Social Security is SELF-FUNDING and is NOT part of the federal budget deficit problem and should NEVER have been used as a bargaining tool. But Obama wants to kill off Social Security; he made that clear when he appointed two people with long records of hating Social Security to head his deficit commission — Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles.
It is almost unbelievable that a Democratic president would lead the charge to destroy Social Security, but that’s what we have here with Obama.
The first clue to what Obama was about should have been when, during the campaign, Obama told us he found Reagan transformational but never mentioned FDR, who REALLY WAS transformational.
This so-called “payroll” tax “holiday” of 2% is really a 30% CUT in revenue for Social Security. The Social Security tax rate has been 6.2% and for the year 2011 will be cut to 4.2% — that is 30% DECREASE in revenue.
When this “payroll” tax “holiday” expires at the end of 2011, we KNOW the Republicans will advertise returning the rate to what it was as a 50% tax INCREASE, and it will be defeated.
That means Social Security will be permanently DEPRIVED of 30% of its needed revenue.
It is then just a matter of minutes until the Republicans tell us (again) that Social Security is BROKE and must be TERMINATED.
The Social Security trust fund currently has a SURPLUS of $2.3 Trillion and was on track to accumulate a SURPLUS of $4 Trillion — accumulated for the specific purpose of dealing with the retirement of the baby boomers..
Then, Obama came along.
This one-year Social Security tax “holiday” will deprive the Social Security fund of $112 Billion. If the tax “holiday” is extended — or even made permanent — in the 2011 session, it won’t take long to shut down Social Security.
This is how the Republicans plan to kill Social Security.
CALL me if you have heard even one TV person or print newspaper person explain what this “payroll” tax “holiday” REALLY is — the foot in the door to kill off Social Security.
Social Security is NOT part of the federal deficit problem, and it is sheer evil on Obama’s part to use the federal deficit as an opportunity to destroy Social Security.
Social Security is SELF-FUNDING and is not part of the federal deficit or federal debt problem — there is NO reason to cut or harm Social Security.
I’m praying this is the issue that will make Hillary primary Obama, but I’m not holding my breath.
I wish some in the MSM would just start asking the right questions about the Soc. Sec. *problem*, i.e. that there isn’t one. And then just start bombarding the *righties* with those questions.
I agree, but they also need to bombard Obama with the same questions — such as WHY did he appoint two men with long histories of hating Social Security to co-chair his deficit commission.
The clips in that awful Karaoke video are from my favorite film of all-time, “Waterloo Bridge” (1940) , starring Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor. Here’s the real “Auld Lang Syne” scene from the film:
Thanks! This helps….
How can it be that Obama — touted to us as so smart that he is easily bored — does NOT know the basic FACTS about which group of Americans Social Security was FIRST designed to protect from old age poverty?
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– from “While Whacking Critics, Obama Gets Facts Wrong” at: http://tinyurl.com/3a5yrbz
While arguing at Tuesday’s press conference that his progressive critics are being sanctimonious and overly pure, President Obama flatly misstated the history of the Social Security program . . .
. . . .
(OBAMA:) “This is why FDR, when he started Social Security, it only affected widows and orphans. You did not qualify. And yet now it is something that really helps a lot of people.”
As it happens, Obama said the same thing in October, in an interview with Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart: “When Social Security was passed, it applied to widows and orphans and it was a very restricted program, and over time that structure that was built ended up developing into the most important social safety net that we have in our country.” That did not go unnoticed in the blogosphere, either.
Obama’s overall point — that Social Security wasn’t born fully grown — was exactly right. But his facts were exactly wrong. The Social Security Act, as first signed into law by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1935, paid retirement benefits to the primary worker– and not to their widows and orphans. It wasn’t until a 1939 change that the law ADDED benefits for survivors and for the retiree’s spouse and children.
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The QUESTION is: Is Obama colossally stupid or colossally dishonest?
Both.
Words read from a teleprompter – who wrote the speech – a writer who lacks research skills and duh won who thinks its factual because he said so.
Absolutely angienc – he is both.
I don’t understand why people think being easily bored means you are smart. To me it shows a lack of intellectual curiosity – look how much time he spends playing endless golf and shooting hoops. I don’t think he’s stupid, though – just intellectually lazy with an overblown opinion of himself.
I cannot believe anyone could be so cruel to Vivien Leigh as to make her karaoke fodder.
Thank you again for the linkage and kind words. Have a glorious New Year, mister.
The oil price thing is getting very little play in the supposed news organizations. Gas is up over $3.20 here- and what do we hear? Nada, zip, zilch.
Seems to me I remember when the shrub was at 1600 it would be the lead story on all the “news” programs every time gas moved three cents. Since the fraud took office gas has gone from approx $1.60 to the current +$3 and where are the “news” types? So I guess it’s only “news” when a shrub from Texas is in office? What was it that candidate chicago thug said he thought the price of gas should be???
What I have read regarding oil prices is that: inventories are down in the U.S. (why? does that mean the o.c.’s are not refining as much? why not?) and that oil is rising on the spot market and OPEC is not responding by pumping more.
The other day I noticed reg. unleaded was running about $2.85/gal. here in AL. But that’s an increase that started several weeks ago from $2.65 or so.
We haven’t seen $2.85 since around Hallowe’en. Today it is $3.19 for reg unleaded. Over in Ohio $3 – state taxes at work.
But what do the media and politicians care? They can afford to gas up their vehicles. Those of us on a budget- well we just stop going places and we stop spending on other things to make up for it.
When gas was at its worst here we stopped going anywhere except work and church. All errands were done on the way to or from. No movies, no eating out, no non essentials.
Now with me being out on worker’s comp it is even worse- and we have cut absolutely everything to the bare bones. At one point in the last round of near $4 gasoline we cut off cable and internet- those are the last two non essentials- and it is looking like it is going to be the same again.
When it hits $3.25 I HAVE to shut something off-
PMM: I think I saw that the highest prices were in the N.E. and naturally, Cali.
Of course what kills me is when it jumps overnight. Isn’t that the same gas in those big tanks that was there the day before 30 or 40 cents cheaper?
Yet another example of the Unseen Hand of Capitalism giving you the finger.
If Barack is going up, why is Palin going? (No, I’m not going to finish that sentence because one of my fellow Smarties – (regulars who post on JWS), would make a tacky out of it)
Still, this proves the point that although we may find Sarah Palin’s politics repugnant, she is not a contender, which is good news for women who want our 1st female Executive to have a fully functioning brain with all of the intellectual accoutrements.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/28/cnn-2012-poll-obama-palin-going-in-different-directions/
This poll looks like the repucks are favoring the male bible thumpers in 2012. Whodathunkit????
Anon: Quelle surprise!
Yep, the GOP’ers are going for Huckabee over Palin. UGH!!! What a desperate decision that must be. With the deluge of Palin we’ve had over the past 2 years the truth of Sarah was destined to leak out and now the lid is coming off of Sarah Palin and even her own party is looking elsewhere. You can’t “refudiate” that.
On the housing topic: is anyone really surprised? We’ve been artificially propping up housing prices since the subprime bubble burst, but it can’t be sustained forever. Sooner or later, the market WILL adjust to a realistic equilibrium, which will probably be lower than now. That article almost made me choke when it pointed out that housing prices are 29.6% below their peak…as though that’s a bad thing. Seriously? We’re expected to think that home values should be back where they were AT THE HEIGHT OF THE BUBBLE? Why? What happened in the fundamentals of the market to warrant such a high valuation, beyond just wishful thinking? Oh wait, I just answered my own question. Point is, this particular market will inevitably correct. Artificial inflation will only make matters worse in the long run. I’d have thought we’d have learned that lesson by now.
On the Social Security thing: ok, I got it. SS has brought in a lot more $ than it’s paid out over the years. That’s not the issue. The issue is that all that $ got spent on other things. It doesn’t exist, because the mythical trust fund never existed. What they call the trust fund is a bunch of IOUs. Well sorry, that ain’t a trust fund. By definition. So it is worse than useless to harp over and over and over again about how SS didn’t add to the deficit and how it was projected to keep a surplus for X amount of time. Had that surplus ACTUALLY been in a trust fund that couldn’t be touched, and was invested so it could experience the magic of compounding interest, that might matter. But it hasn’t been, and never was, so all that lauded surplus is meaningless because it’s gone. And in the (very near) future demographics will be such that SS won’t be in the black anymore. The entire discussion of SS isn’t about the current state of affairs, or past states of affairs. It’s about the future. It does no good for a bunch of political types, or people who are collecting SS now, to talk about how it’s been fine up til now, and will be fine for 20 years of whatever. There’s no way it can continue to be fine in perpetuity as it currently exists. So sorry, but something is going to have to change.
Monies paid into Social Security are used to buy Government Securities. Each security has a maturity date and the Government MUST repay the SS Trust on that Security, plus interest accrued at the due date. Yes the government uses the monies invested into Government Securities from the SS Trust just as it uses any monies invested in Government Securities, but to say it isn’t SOLVENT is like saying that because the bank uses your money to invest in other projects that you are not solvent or that you are no longer the owner of that money you have saved.
Could the government default on repayment of monies invested into govt securities, yes, but to do so the Federal Government would have to declare bankruptcy which would mean defaulting on repayment to ALL creditors, not just SS receipents. SS receipents from the baby boomer generation have been investing in our government for 40 years, do you not think those who have in good faith invested sweat equity into our government can just be thrown off like a saddlebag???? Not hardly. Perhaps the rules will be modified with means testing and retirement age adjustments, but SS will be paid or the Government will go completely bankrupt, those are the only 2 choices.
Well, ALL Treasury bonds, bills and notes are really just I.O.U.s. So, do you plan to tell every investment house, trust fund and every private person who holds Treasury bonds, bills or notes that they are really holding worthless paper?
Alexei, you really need to stop spreading lies about Social Security ( I don’t know if you are simply uninformed or just malevolent). Until Obama and the Republicans pushed this little tax “holiday” Social Security was on track to increasing its SURPLUS to $4 Trillion.
If there is some minor problem that MAY exist 30 years from now, the fix is easy: raise the cap on income taxed for Social Security purposes.
Social Security is solvent and will be solvent for the next 75 years if you and your ilk just keep your greedy hands off the Social Security funds.
Duck…..Spot on! It seems to me that the people who revel the most in the “we must do something to “change” Social Security” are the people who see SS as a handout to seniors. They have no idea what SS is or how the trust works. I’m so tired of the scare tactics and the misinformation being doled out by these know-nothings I could go to ALL CAPS.
Again, you are missing the point. A surplus that is spent is not useful as a surplus, so it’s specious to keep pointing at it as though somehow all is fine.
You cast dispersion on the monstrous fiscal trap that SS, Medicare, and other entitlements pose in the future as though the inevitability of their collapse doesn’t matter. Well maybe to you it doesn’t. I get the impression that many if not most on this board are quite a bit older than me. Maybe you won’t have to deal with the consequences, but I will, and so will my kids. Most folks in my age group and younger have no faith that that SS will in any way benefit us. We can read the current % of the budget that these items require, and the projections for 10, 20 years from now. It doesnt take a rocket scientist to accept reality.
Many of you folks seem to automatically assume dastardly motives to people who disagree with you. No one is “anti-old people”. I’m not advocating doing away with SS. What I AM advocating is chaining it from the dishonest scheme that exists now. If a private investment firm ran a system like SS, they’d be thrown in prison (see Bernie Madoff), as well they should be. I want a system where your contributions are yours. In your account, and able to be invested or not as you see fit, within guidelines to minimize risks. And not subject to Congressional whim. Under the current system, Congress is under no obligation…none…to pay out the benefits that you think you’re entitled too. They can change or do away with them at any time, essentially stealing what you’ve put in over the years. Of course, what you’ve put in was stolen already, because it was immediately spent on someone else’s check or to pay for some other government program.
Don’t talk to me about disinformation. This entire program, as currently incarnated, was and continues to be sold through the worst kind of disinformation. For morality’s sake as much as any fiscal reason, it needs to be reformed.
“If a private investment firm ran a system like SS, they’d be thrown in prison”
How’s the weather on Uranus? ONLY a person not of this world would or could write such nonsense in the face of what Wall Street Investment Banks/Firms did to the U.S. Economy between 2008 & 2010. Remember the bailouts of the to big to fails? Not to mention the millions of Americans who lost a lionshare of their retirement savings in the Wall Street Debacle. Rememb er those working Americans who didn’t get bailed out? And we won’t even mention what it did to the trillions of dollars Americans lost in home equity through depreciating home values all due to the greed and avarice of Wallstreet & Mortgage Bankers. This has nothing to do with age and everything to do with paying attention to the reality of the world you REALLY live in, not the picture painted by SS hating republicans.
Alexei:
Social Security has been the most scandal-free government program in history, plus its administrative costs are below one percent — and neither of those two statements can be made about any private investment companies or their products.
Go peddle your baloney somewhere else.
P.S. U.S. Treasury bonds, bills and notes are still the safest and most respected investments in the world.
And what changes in SS would you suggest, Alexei?
I think I answered that above. Basically: your SS input goes into your account. Yours. You then choose how to invest it, with legal bounds on the choices availability to avoid taking on excessive risk. No Political interference. No Congress using it as a bargaining chip or as a means to demogogue a political opponent Just you and your money.
Look up how Chile does it. That’s basically what I’d like to see here.
Yeah, that privatization crap would have really worked out well in the 2008 meltdown.
Duck….Alexi was apparently still living on Uranus during the 2008 meltdown, so he/she saw no wallstreet evil and heard no wallstreet evil.
And Alexi wants what Chile has? OMG!!!! Chile was in political chaos for much of the 20th century. It’s entire population is only twice that of New York City and Alexi wants to model our system after, CHILE????
Alexi, I have owned clothes longer than Chile has experienced a stable government. Better be careful what you wish for.
Whoops….What I meant to say Alexi, is that I have clothes, in my closet, that I’ve owned longer than Chile has had a stable government. I think that says more about my wardrobe, than my age. But if it matters to you, I’m older, with children and grandchildren (since you threw that out as a reason for wanting to see SS reformed) and the survival of SS is as important to me today, as it was 40 years ago. In the 1960′s, the 1970′s, the 1980′s, the 1990′s and now in 2010/2011 the Repubs are using the EXACT same arguments against SS as they did in my youth. I can’t help it if my memory is long enough to remember every trick the Repubs have used to try to end SS in the last 50 years. That’s what I get for living so damned long.
LOL, ANonOMOUSE! Well said! The Chile Model -yes, yes, that’s what we need!
Alexei, why don’t you just move to Chile? I will chip in for the one-way ticket.
Alexei, your proposed SS plan seems like a long run for short slide. If you favor private retirement accounts, then be done with it, and leave the govt out of it.
If, on the other hand, the goal is to ensure that every American has an adequate retirement fund, then we all do that together — via our tool for doing things together, the govt. We put all the money in one big, safe fund. And guess what — that’s how SS is set up!
That those funds were not put in the “lock box”, but rather have been borrowed from, does not alter the fundamentally sound set up of SS.
I think bailing out the big banks and greedy, evil investment houses (whose management honchos made disastrous decisions for their companies and should have been fired) should have been privatized and only those who wished to participate in that bailing out should have had their taxes used for that.