Left Side View

Myth: Social Security is going broke.

Reality: There is no Social Security crisis. By 2023, Social Security will have a $4.3 trillion surplus (yes, trillion with a 'T'). It can pay out all scheduled benefits for the next quarter-century with no changes whatsoever.¹ After 2037, it'll still be able to pay out 75% of scheduled benefits--and again, that's without any changes. The program started preparing for the Baby Boomers retirement decades ago.² Anyone who insists Social Security is broke probably wants to break it themselves.

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Myth: We have to raise the retirement age because people are living longer.

Reality: This is a red-herring to trick you into agreeing to benefit cuts. Retirees are living about the same amount of time as they were in the 1930s. The reason average life expectancy is higher is mostly because many fewer people die as children than did 70 years ago.³ What's more, what gains there have been are distributed very unevenly--since 1972, life expectancy increased by 6.5 years for workers in the top half of the income brackets, but by less than 2 years for those in the bottom half.⁴But those intent on cutting Social Security love this argument because raising the retirement age is the same as an across-the-board benefit cut.

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Myth: Benefit cuts are the only way to fix Social Security.

Reality: Social Security doesn't need to be fixed. But if we want to strengthen it, here's a better way: Make the rich pay their fair share. If the very rich paid taxes on all of their income, Social Security would be sustainable for decades to come.⁵ Right now, high earners only pay Social Security taxes on the first $106,000 of their income.⁶ But conservatives insist benefit cuts are the only way because they want to protect the super-rich from paying their fair share.

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Myth: The Social Security Trust Fund has been raided and is full of IOUs

Reality: Not even close to true. The Social Security Trust Fund isn't full of IOUs, it's full of U.S. Treasury Bonds. And those bonds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.⁷ The reason Social Security holds only treasury bonds is the same reason many Americans do: The federal government has never missed a single interest payment on its debts. President Bush wanted to put Social Security funds in the stock market--which would have been disastrous--but luckily, he failed. So the trillions of dollars in the Social Security Trust Fund, which are separate from the regular budget, are as safe as can be.

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Myth: Social Security adds to the deficit

Reality: It's not just wrong -- it's impossible! By law, Social Security funds are separate from the budget, and it must pay its own way. That means that Social Security can't add one penny to the deficit.¹

The picture above shows how crazy it has become in America and why so many Americans are mad about the government not enforcing the immigration laws! For one thing what other country in the world allows illegals to come into their country and protest against that country's immigration laws? None! Most would probably throw them into jail right away for being there illegally in the first place! If you think American people and their laws are so bad, why did you leave your own country and come here in the first place? But then again what other government would sue its own people over trying to keep out the illegals?

Clinton Appointee Judge Susan Bolton

PHOENIX – A federal judge stepped into the fight over Arizona's immigration law at the last minute Wednesday, blocking the heart of the measure and defusing a confrontation between police and thousands of activists that had been building for months.
Coming just hours before the law was to take effect, the ruling isn't the end.
It sets up a lengthy legal battle that could end up before the Supreme Court — ensuring that a law that reignited the immigration debate, inspired similar measures nationwide, created fodder for political campaigns and raised tensions with Mexico will stay in the spotlight.
Protesters who gathered at the state Capitol and outside the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City cheered when they heard the news. The governor, the law's authors and anti-illegal immigration groups vowed to fight on. "I knew the judge would say that part of the law was just not right," said Gisela Diaz, 50, from Mexico City, who came to Arizona on a since-expired tourist visa in 1989 and who waited with her family early Wednesday at the Mexican Consulate to get advice about the law.
"It's the part we were worried about. This is a big relief for us," she said. About 100 protesters in Mexico City who had gathered in front of the U.S. Embassy broke into cheers when they learned of Bolton's ruling. They had been monitoring the news on a laptop computer.
"Migrants, hang on, the people are rising up!" they chanted.
Mexico's Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinoza called the ruling "a first step in the right direction" and said staff at the five Mexican consulates in Arizona will work extra hours in coming weeks to educate migrants about the law. Unsurprisingly the U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton is a Clinton appointee. Does federal law trump state law, when the Federal government will not enforce the law? Judge Bolton’s decision is an important victory for the Obama administration in the face of a rising tide of concern among several states that the federal government is not effectively enforcing immigration law or effectively protecting US borders.

Left Side view of Social Security. (usadailynews.freshcontentengine.com)

ZOMBIE SOCIAL SECURITY LIE: THE SYSTEM IS GOING “BANKRUPT”
Posted on July 25, 2010, 3:06 pm


Panic! Lose your minds! And above all …. Privatize! Privatize! Privatize! Because the entire Social Security system is about to crash and go belly up!

Except that it’s not.

Here’s our expert, Nancy Altman, in her sensational debunking book from 2005, The Battle for Social Security: From FDR’s Vision To Bush’s Gamble, discussing the 1980 panic over the future of the program and the use of the “bankruptcy” scare, the same zombie scare that’s rearing its head again today:

Bankruptcy is a meaningless concept when applied to the federal government as a whole or any of its programs. As long as the federal government has, under the Constitution, “Power To Lay and collect Taxes” and the authority to issue and sell Treasury bonds, it and its programs will not go bankrupt. It is instructive to note that the reference to potential bankruptcy would be impossible to claim if Congress simply reinstated the authorization, present in the law from 1943 to 1950, to pay any shortfall in Social Security out of general revenue.

Out of all federal programs, Social Security was being singled out for alarmist claims about bankruptcy because it operated under the conservative principles of a balanced budget and long-range projections. No one ever pointed out that if deficit spending were the definition of bankruptcy in a federal program, then the entire federal government―other than Social Security―had been bankrupt for 20 years. During the prior two decades [to 1980], the government had run deficits every year with the exception of 1969.

Ask yourself this: Why this one program? Why, decade after decade, have conservatives fanned the flame of paranoia about this specific program when every other federal program, and the government itself, operates at a deficit? Why is the healthiest program on the privatization block? Who wins and who loses if wealth is transferred from this public insurance program into private hands?

It would be irresponsible not to speculate, wouldn’t it?

As you mull over that mutil-billion dollar question, just keep in mind the simple phrase: Social Security cannot go “bankrupt.”

This has been the third in a series of attempts to slay Zombie Social Security lies with the help of Altman’s book. Altman was Alan Greenspan’s assistant in 1983 when he chaired the panel on fine tuning the program, and her book has helped debunk two other zombie lies in the past couple of weeks: increased life span is dooming the program, and decreased worker-to-beneficiary ratio is killing the program.

Another great resource for any and all information about the health of Social Security can be found at Angry Bear, where Bruce Webb’s series has become a go-to resource on the attempts–and the zombie lies–to scare the bejesus out of Americans and get them to turn their wonderful safety net program over to private profiteers. (We’ve also been lucky enough to have Webb posting here and sharing his expertise.)

Dems, Repubs, all the same!

I must apologize as my Blog has been mostly one sided because I have heavily favored the Republicans over the Democrats in most of my postings! But I've tried to picked only the lessor of two evils because it seems to me that everyone we vote for does OK until they get to Washington. It's kind of like the old saying "when in Rome do as the Romans do" and that seems to be the case with all these politicians. I guess when they start running around with a bunch of thieving, selfish idiots, they soon end up thinking of nothing else but their own financial gain & how best to screw the voter. Another old saying is if you lie with the dogs, you end up with the fleas.

Don't Matter!

Don't matter if you vote against it. Don't matter if you picket against it or write your Congressman, President, Mayor, School board, or County Commissioner etc. till your blue in the face. You get it whether you want it or not. Higher taxes, more bicycle lanes,toll roads you already paid for, schools built like palaces where half the kids don't pass, more trains that no one rides! It comes from the Federal, State, County, and city governments. The majority of us votes against this crap, but it still don't matter cause you get it anyway. They tell you to get out and vote, you can change it! Well most of us have tried that and it still don't matter cause sooner or later it all comes back to haunt you over and over again. It's like a run away car were you keep trying to slam on the brakes, only to discover there are no brakes.

http://politics.upnorthmommy.com/

Massachusetts legislature may pass a bill that throws its electoral college votes to the popular vote winner
Posted: 19 Jul 2010 08:48 PM PDT
The Massachusetts legislature is working on a bill that will alter how its electoral votes are cast in presidential elections. This bill says Massachusetts electoral votes will go to the candidate who wins the popular vote. So what happens if in 2012 the popular vote winner is a Republican and the vast majority of Massachusetts voters voted for Obama?

I can’t imagine that majority of Massachusetts voters would be very happy.

While not perfect, the electoral college is the most effective way to make sure the majority of the American people who live in densely populated cities and states don’t run roughshod over the interests of those who live in sparsely populated rural areas, which is what would certainly happen in a straight popular vote.

There’s a reason why we are a Representative Republic and not a direct democracy. Marvin Simkin from San Diego was absolutely right when he wrote this in the LA Times back in January, 1992:

Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote. Those rights are spelled out in the Bill of Rights and in our California Constitution. Voters and politicians alike would do well to take a look at the rights we each hold, which must never be chipped away by the whim of the majority.

Conspiracy Theorist

I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I am smart enough to know that two plus two equals four. What I'm getting at is I find it kind of strange about the oil leak happening in the gulf at the same time Obama was pushing his green energy bill. A lot of weird things have been going on since that man was elected to office. Take for instance the fact that very few news stations reported the case against the black panthers on voter intimidation charges(that was won already) being dismissed by the attorney general of the united states on orders from his boss! Why would he do that? Going to a church for twenty years that was ran by a racist preacher and always missing out on the sermons about how bad the whites are. Sit down and think to yourself what's wrong with this picture!