Senator Elizabeth Warren on Social Security

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Thank you corporate press for making up down in the USA

Thank you corporate press for making up down in the USA. Quite naturally, the corporate presses refuses to point out that grandma’s social security check comes out of a trust fund with a $2.7 trillion surplus that is invested in US Treasury bills which collects $120 billion a year in interest. So why is Obama cutting payments to grandma when the money she receives doesn’t have anything to do with the deficit? This shows how corrupt the congress and the man in the white house are, as well as the corporate press.

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Obama and the chained fix to Social Security.

Obama and the chained fix to Social Security.

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Ten Facts Wall Street President Barack Obama Doesn’t Want You To Know About His Social Security Slashing Plan

There are ten facts that Wall Street President Barack Obama doesn’t want you to know about his proposed cuts to Social Security payments. He intends these cuts despite a $2.7 trillion Social Security trust fund surplus that earns $120 billion a year in interest. So why is Wall Street’s president cutting main street’s payments that people earned and paid into the system for instead of increasing taxes on millionaires and billionaires? Anyway, click on the link below.

Ten Facts Wall Street President Barack Obama Doesn’t Want You To Know About His Social Security Slashing Plan

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On Whose Behalf do the Democratic and the Republican Leadership Fight For?

What do the Democratic and the Republican Leadership Fight For?

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Why is Obama Negotiating Medicare, Social Security Cuts To Our Grandparents?

As of March 4 2013, Wall Street President Barack Hussein Obama was talking to Republicans about cutting Social Security payments to your grandparents in order to preserve Big Oil‘s $52 billion annual federal entitlement program, and also of finding ways of making the affluent richer by pretending to do things he has no intention of doing. He’s also negotiating to reduce Medicare.

As the president knows, the Social Security Trust Fund has a surplus of $2.7 trillion that collects $120 billion a year in interest. Obviously, this program doesn’t contribute to the deficit at all. So why is Wall Street’s current president negotiating to cut what minimal payments the elderly receive from the program that they paid into?

Supposedly, the president is also negotiating raising taxes on the already rich, the top five percent, but like a good Wall Street Republican in disguise, which is the same as saying he’s a corporate Democrat, the president will most likely either cave in to Republican demands for no tax increases on the rich, or perhaps he will negotiate to ensure that enough tax loopholes exist in any agreement, that the rich pay no more in taxes that they do now, or more than likely, they’ll pay less. It’ll be good theater, no doubt.

Obama supports the Bowles-Simpson proposal as a means to reduce the deficit. Erskine Bowles is a member of the Board of Directors of Wall Street investment bank Morgan Stanley. Simpson is a former GOP senator from Wyoming and a big time supporter of Wall Street. That tells you all you need to know.

In other words, the president may be looking to redistribute income from your grandparents on their fixed incomes to the top 1 percent as a way of cutting the federal deficit. By the way, Republicans like this income redistribution scam since they play this game all the time.

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President Obama, the Republicans, and the Proposed Unnecessary Cuts to Social Security, and the lies and myths about Social Security

The Social Security Trust Fund has grown every year since 1983, thanks to President Ronald Reagan and the adjustments to funding that he initiated. It even grew last year and the year before despite the cut in payroll taxes from 6 to 4 percent.

However, the corporate press will only let you know about about the Social Security Trust Fund deficit between the taxes it takes in and the money it pays out even though the system is sitting on a $2.7 trillion surplus that collects about $120 billion in interest per year. When you count the interest, there has always been a surplus, at least since 1983.

Take a look at part of the report from the trustees of the Social Security Trust Fund from 2012. Italics and bold are mine.

“Social Security’s expenditures exceeded non-interest income in 2010 and 2011, the first such occurrences since 1983, and the Trustees estimate that these expenditures will remain greater than non-interest income throughout the 75-year projection period. The deficit of non-interest income relative to expenditures was about $49 billion in 2010 and $45 billion in 2011, and the Trustees project that it will average about $66 billion between 2012 and 2018 before rising steeply as the economy slows after the recovery is complete and the number of beneficiaries continues to grow at a substantially faster rate than the number of covered workers. Redemption of trust fund assets from the General Fund of the Treasury will provide the resources needed to offset the annual cash-flow deficits. Since these redemption’s will be less than interest earnings through 2020, nominal trust fund balances will continue to grow. The trust fund ratio, which indicates the number of years of program cost that could be financed solely with current trust fund reserves, peaked in 2008, declined through 2011, and is expected to decline further in future years. After 2020, Treasury will redeem trust fund assets in amounts that exceed interest earnings until exhaustion of trust fund reserves in 2033, three years earlier than projected last year. Thereafter, tax income would be sufficient to pay only about three-quarters of scheduled benefits through 2086.

A temporary reduction in the Social Security payroll tax rate reduced payroll tax revenues by $103 billion in 2011 and by a projected $112 billion in 2012. The legislation establishing the payroll tax reduction also provided for transfers of revenues from the general fund to the trust funds in order to “replicate to the extent possible” payments that would have occurred if the payroll tax reduction had not been enacted. Those general fund reimbursements comprise about 15 percent of the program’s non-interest income in 2011 and 2012.”

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The Greatest Acheivement of President Ronald Reagan

In a previous story, I outlined some of the misconceptions about President Ronald Reagan. See http://johnhively.wordpress.com/2013/02/06/myths-and-accomplishments-of-president-ronald-reagan/. However, President Reagan had some positive accomplishments even if modern day conservatives and liberals are loath to admit them.

For example, when Reagan was president, the long term outlook for the Social Security Trust Fund did not look good. So Reagan appointed a committee to overhaul the system. The committee’s recommendation included a massive increase in the payroll tax, which mostly hits the 99 percent. Reagan approved and signed the deal.

Today, both Republicans and corporate Democrats (which are 80 percent of the Democratic Party in DC) tell us through the corporate media that Social Security is broke, that it’s filled with worthless IOU’s, and that it needs to be privatized so that recipients can receive less benefits and Wall Street can steal money from the fund. But the Social Security Trust Fund is not broke.

The Trust Fund has a $2.7 trillion dollar surplus invested in US treasury bills, the most secure investment in the world since the US government has never failed to pay its debt when the bill comes due. Those treasury bills collect about $120 billion dollars a year in interest. Even when tax receipts to the fund are less than payouts, the Trust Fund has a positive net flow. For example, in 2010, Social Security paid out $42 billion more than it took in tax receipts. The corporate media reported a crisis, saying Social Security was broke! They lied. They refused to count the interest Social Security received on its treasury bills. The Trust Fund had a $78 billion surplus that year, if you count the interst it was earning.

Thank you President Reagan! One should suggest, perhaps, that this retirement program should be called the “FDR/Ronald Reagan Social Security Trust Fund.” That would be appropriate.

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Why does the Republican Party need really insane candidates?

Why does the Republican Party leadership keep pushing idiots for political offices? The answer is simple. On the national and state level, it’s a party completely controlled by a slice of the super-rich, and these people are completely out of touch with the rest of the nation.

A small group of billionaires, such as the Koch Brothers and Sheldon Adelson, run the party. These people are rabidly anti-tax, anti-middle class warriors. These billionaires are the big money behind Grover Norquist, and they’re the guys that frighten Republican candidates into submission on the issues, not Norquist.

That’s why fewer and fewer sane and intelligent people are willing to run for national or state political office as Republicans. At the bottom of the barrel, there are plenty of stupid people willing to submit to the whims of these few and further their aspirations in the process. In other words, in the Republican Party, turds rise to the top because the cream flees from the Republican Party container due to the stench of their positions. That’s why we have a speaker of the House that is a former bug killer.

As these billionaires continue to veer more and more to the right for their personal gain, like the destruction of the self-sustaining Social Security Trust (i.e. meaning the privatization of Social Security, which is a code word for profitization of Social Security on behalf of themselves), lower tax rates for the rich that destroy jobs and the economy, etc….

Perhaps a recent article in the Washington Post said it best of the Republican Party, “It’s not just on the ideas side where the center of the GOP is moving. The rise of American Crossroads/Crossroads GPS as well as Americans for Prosperity — and a slew of other conservative-minded outside groups — have made them the major financial players in campaigns. Unlike political party committees, which are limited in the sort of donations they can accept, these outside groups can take unlimited checks from individuals.”

The billionaire money behind those groups are the driving force behind the far right and getting further right political positions and battle plans of the GOP and its candidates. None of these are good for the nation and the middle class.

The Republican Party is controlled insanely greedy billionaires, and that’s why they need to have really insane candidates.

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Boeing Receives $25 billion a year in military contracts, Wants to Cut Social Security to the Aged and Infirmed

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