Tag: Social Security

I am sorry for ruining your day, but I need to make you very worried. Republicans want to steal our Social Security and Medicare. Senate...

This hypocritical, shameless crap from Republicans would be laughable if it weren't so deadly serious, damaging, dangerous, etc. In this case, Representatives Dave Brat...

Dave Brat-- 1- Opposes any gun legislation, even to keep weapons out of the hands of suspected terrorists. 2- Opposes women's rights to control their bodies. 3-...

7 reasons to vote for Eileen Bedell for Congress. 1. If you are worried about the effect climate change will have on your children and...

(Originally Published in DailyKos Dave Brat is not an ordinary politician. He does not compromise. He does not make deals. He is a true believer....

I missed this excellent article ("Behold the GOP’s not-so-secret plan to dismantle government services: Defund, degrade and then privatize") in my morning news clips...

Eric Cantor is back home from voting a 40th time to overturn "Obamacare," with a pit stop at Fox News where he spouted the latest right-wing talking points about how we have to cut "entitlements" to get the House to fund the government for the next fiscal year because of the "deficit crisis."  But, guess what? There IS no run-away budget deficit. In spite of the do-nothing GOP House of Representatives and the filibuster-loving Senate GOP minority, the deficit is under control. This deficit reduction wasn't done the right way, nor was it done in a way to actually improve government efficiency. Atlantic magazine this month explains just how deficit management was stumbled into, in spite of the Republican-caused gridlock in Washington.

The first step to lowering the deficit was the fiscal-cliff deal the president got Congress to agree to before the first of the year, the deal that raised income tax rates on wealthy Americans. Then, because Congress refused to act to stop a ridiculous sequester that was so extreme no one figured it would happen, another $1 trillion will be lopped off the deficit by the end of the next decade. Those combined actions, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, are sufficient to stabilize the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio. That means the debt is no longer growing faster than the U.S. economy. The deficit crisis is over. As the economy slowly regains momentum after the Great Recession, the improvement in the deficit picture will become even more pronounced.

It's time to declare victory in the deficit war and work to replace the idiotic sequester with more reasonable and sustainable budget constraints. Plus, Congress needs to raise the debt limit and pass a budget. However, Cantor and his tea-poisoned majority in the House now insist that Social Security and Medicare have to be slashed. Since neither one caused the deficit in the first place, it would be foolish to agree to whatever cockamamie scheme Cantor and company have planned to wreck the social safety net for seniors.  

Photo credit: C-Span

People receiving Social Security paid for their benefits throughout their working years.  They did so with their own payroll deductions.  There is an employer's portion as well. But the worker essentially pays for that portion too, by receiving lower pay. In other words, ALL of it comes out of the workers' hides (err paycheck) during their working lives.  There is, however, a portion of  Social Security which is not based on work the beneficiary has done. I speak of survivors' benefits.  Survivors' benefits are based upon the work record of a deceased person.  I am not here addressing whether or not that is a good thing, though I think it is (a good thing).  This portion of Social Security assures that parents of young children left without a breadwinner get the a benefit for each child until each turns 18.  

Paul Ryan received such a benefit. And then he has the nerve to call Social Security recipients as looters (for using the very old age insurance they paid for during their working lives). Why does Paul Ryan hate old people?

I would like to say, how dare he, he who benefited from a system he had never put into at that point?  The man talked like this vilifying essentially every American, for nearly every American will one day take Social Security, assuming that we do not allow Republicans and a few Blue Dogs to destroy the program.  

Please take a look at Mark Warner being Warner in a way that is just so hurtful to Dems this year.  Says he:

I think it's going to  be very close.  I know he's got problems in SW Virginia He's doing better in Eastern and Northern Virginia.

And I'll tell you this much, I'm supporting President Obama, but I also am awful tired of all the negative ads. I wish we wouldn't be spending  2 billion dollars on tv tearing each other down. That money could be used for interstate 81 and scholarships.  Hopefully, we'll get through this election like we've gotten through all the others and get back to solving our country's problems, especially the debt and deficit.

He just cannot seem to help himself.  He can't endorse the president without trying to distance himself at the same time. He can't talk about health care reform without saying there's a lot that needs to be fixed (in the Affordable Care Act).  

His effort to create out of nothing a false equivalence between the two parties regarding negative ads is appalling. The GOP lie machine spins the lies faster than we can rebut them. But Warner pretends both parties are doing it. He also implies that it's "negative" to refute a pile of lies. I call it necessary. And there is nothing wrong with that. Such a false equivalence is cowardly, shameful, and self-serving. Lying down and playing dead will not work. And putting up only "positive" ads won't work either.  

Along the way, Warner panders to Bristol Motor Speedway fans, coal, enemies of "ObamaCare," and Peter Peterson's "deficit" hawkeroos. (Hawkeroos are two-faced show-offs who like to prattle away at how spending conscious they are. But they won't make the rich pay their fair share. No, sir.)

What is really disconcerting is his self-adulating self-absorption. He is posturing every minute. Warner's myth of the "radical center" is really all about such posturing and it's also about trying to reinvent as virtuous all those things he doesn't stand for, but should, like enabling the EPA to keep our air and water clean. Or helping the 99% as opposed to the wealthy who don't need more tax cuts. It is as if he's out there saying, "Look at me.  I'm better than all of you. I am especially better than President Obama." (No, you are not, Mark.)

E.W. Jackson used an anomaly in Social Security history to score an oversimplified and essentially dishonest political point. Typical of the new conservative, Jackson either ignores history, is uninterested in facts or context, or is ignorant. In this respect, "the media" swims in the same cesspool.

"In Galveston, Texas, they have allowed people to privatize part of their Social Security. And people are building wealth." - E. J. Jackson

Impracticable Economic Deceptions (IEDs) are the currency of the "free market" right and sustain the Tea Party utopian ideal. The Republican Party has propagated these myths with passion. The origin of the species can be traced to the less evolved and more transparent supply side Laffer curve which has sired many well-camouflaged mutant and hybrid economic myths. These IEDs have been deployed along the path to our future and threaten to devastate any hope for the American dream.

Jackson's pointless point about the Galveston pension system is instructive. First, it is about the shorthand that the right uses constructing mantras that appeal to the under and misinformed. Next, Social Security, like health care reform, suffered obstruction and practical implementation issues from its inception. What Jackson has helped fashion by planting Galveston in the heads of the thankfully few Virginians who heard or read about the Republican debate is a piece of an horrific IED: privatizing Social Security.