Unbossed and
unbought news and information you can use
Vol. 14 No.
29…Dedicated
to the Dialogue on Race…July 18, 2011
DISHing It Up Hot!
On Taking a Break!
By Dot
This past week my family
celebrated the 91st birthday of Willie Mae Gray, my husband's
mother. John and I took our grandchildren to
Surrounded by her children,
grand- and great-grandchildren, Mother Gray beamed with pride and joy. We were
all treated to performances by the little ones, while older members of the clan
recalled memorable moments in the life of Mother Gray, who remains active in
her church, where she runs the food pantry.
On the way back to
In taking this much-needed break, John and I decided to tune out all the
political rhetoric over taxes, spending, the deficit and debt ceiling. Rather
than listening to news programs, we were entertained by our grandchildren; we
feel all the richer for having done so.
Ironically, the news did not change in our absence. The rhetoric may have gotten a bit more heated, but there is still gridlock over taxes, spending, deficits and the debt. It is almost as if we never left.
Intuit's Vibe
What is Social
Security?
Social Security gives expression
to the principle "we are all in it together" and reflects the basic
American values of hard work, personal responsibility, caring for family and
neighbors, prudent management and respect for dignity and independence. Social 
Security
beneficiaries earned their benefits by paying into the system throughout their
time at work. These values and Social Security's fundamental structure, in
place since 1935, have withstood the test of time.
Social Security provides a guaranteed income each year for more than 53 million
American workers and their families who have lost income due to retirement,
disability or death. That's nearly one family out of four.
Nearly two-thirds of retirees count on Social Security for most of their retirement incomes. It is a safety net that keeps retirees out of poverty. Between 1960 and 2008, Social Security helped cut the poverty rate among seniors by more than two-thirds, from 35 percent to just under 10 percent. More than 1 million children--more than 15 percent of those who receive, or live in a family that receives, benefits--are kept out of poverty by Social Security.
The Social Security trust fund is fundamentally sound with a surplus that, according to both the Social Security Trustees and the Congressional Budget Office, will continue for years to come. The trust fund is projected to grow from $2.5 trillion in 2009 to $4.2 trillion in 2024. Social Security can meet 100 percent of its obligations through 2037. And even if no changes are made, it can pay nearly 80 percent of scheduled benefits thereafter.
But something should be done. Social Security should and can be strengthened for future generations with relatively modest adjustments that do not include benefit cuts. The shortfall is manageable with the estimated gap between projected revenues and outlays only between 0.5 percent and 0.7 percent of GDP over a 75-year horizon. The options for addressing the Social Security shortfall include a combination of the following: gradually raising the maximum taxable earnings base ("raising the cap"); lifting the cap for employer contributions; gradually raising the payroll tax rate over time; applying the payroll tax to income from interest, dividends, capital gains and stock options; and dedicating the estate tax to the Social Security trust fund, following the 2009 provisions, which tax only estates of more than $3.5 million ($7 million for couples).
With the decline in
defined-benefit pensions, the dramatic increase in economic uncertainty and the
loss of retirement savings for millions of Americans, strengthening Social
Security's core guarantee of retirement with dignity is more important than
ever. (Source: www.aflcio.org/issues/retirementsecurity/socialsecurity/ss_whatis.cfm)
The Continuing Assault on Social Security
By Junious Ricardo
Stanton
"For decades, AARP -- the nation's largest advocacy group for
seniors -- has been viewed as the most powerful defender of Social 
Security. As a result, any hint that the
organization might entertain benefit cuts would be seen as an abrupt
about-face. But that's precisely what happened a few days ago, when a front
page story in the Wall Street Journal proclaimed that the organization had
dropped its long-standing opposition to cutting Social Security benefits.
Almost as soon as the story appeared, AARP officials called it inaccurate and
said it misconstrued the organization's position. There had been no change in
policy, they said. But what really rankled David Certner, the organization's
legislative policy director, was the timing of the story. It appeared just as
negotiations on raising the federal debt ceiling were kicking into high gear.
And Certner says it left the impression that AARP would not oppose benefit cuts
as part of the effort to reduce the deficit." For
AARP a Monumental Shift on Social Security- Wendy Kaufman http://www.npr.org/2011/06/24/137395740.
The Kleptocrats and their flunkies in the media and Congress have set their
sights on gutting Social Security and Medicare Programs under the guise of
"deficit reduction." Don't believe the hype! Their real goal is to
reduce the
Social Security started out as a modified Ponzi scheme where the taxes taken in
were much greater than the benefits paid out to the original recipients when
the program first started. Over the years, the Social Security Trust Fund built
up a huge surplus worth hundreds of billions of dollars. However, when the
Vietnam War drained the treasury and created massive deficits, Lyndon Johnson
raided the Social Security Trust Fund to pay down some (not all) of the debt
his policies caused. Every president since has been "borrowing" money
(never repaying it) from the Social Security Trust Fund to the point it is
approaching insolvency. That's right the fund itself is near broke. The reason
it is approaching insolvency is because more baby boomers are retiring and
drawing benefits, more people are filing for SSI, the economic slow down has
unemployment at an all time high, so less money is coming into the account; but
more importantly, the government is taking from the Trust Fund to keep the
deficits from going through the roof.
The ruling elite wants to gut the program altogether for their own nefarious reasons. It is not a burden to tax payers and if it had been left alone would have trillions in surplus funds to pay benefits for years to come! But nooo, the Kleptocratic psychopaths have bribed their flunkies in Congress to do their bidding to further their plan to gut Social Security, wage increasing wars all over the planet and cut taxes for the super rich that have bankrupted this country.
"Pretending to be cutting taxes for the middle class, the cabal and its Congressional lackeys have cut payroll contributions to Social Security from 6.2% to 4.2%, representing a loss to the Social Security Fund of $140 billion the first year! The Obama/Republican Party 2 percent payroll tax cut actually means 2 percent of the 6.2 percentage points of total salary that now go into Social Security payroll taxes--30 percent of the total payroll tax money. Your payroll deduction of 6.2 percent is a way to build for your retirement. Your employer also pays 6.2 percent of your wages into the Social Security Fund. Reducing your payroll deductions by 2 percent is DETRIMENTAL to you--endangering your retirement. Your boss is HAPPY to reduce the amount he has to pay relative to your retirement. The Democrats and Republicans who voted for the tax cut bill believe workers are so stupid that they'll think this reduction of 2 percent--which they're falsely calling a tax reduction--is a benefit to workers." The Cabal Is Destroying Social Security www.hermes-press.com/sss1.htm.
The rich pay the Congress critters to cut their taxes so they can get richer while we loose our homes, our jobs, savings, pensions and social safety nets due to their schemes that have imploded the global economy!! To add insult to injury, AARP, the supposed advocate for senior citizens, appears to have sold us out and is giving its blessing to cutting Social Security benefits to reduce the deficit. That is a specious argument especially since Social Security is a pay as you go program. The problem is and the AARP executives should know this, the federal government has been raiding the Social Security Trust Fund since the 1960's.
There are several things that
could be done to make the program solvent, one is stop all these wars and bring
the troops home. But the psychopaths and war mongers aren't going to do that.
In fact they plan to wage even more wars under the guise of "national
interests, humanitarianism, safety and security". The most practical thing
Congress could do is raise the rate of taxes the rich pay into Social Security
based upon their income. This would generate billions in revenue and make the
program whole again. "One of the ways to make Social Security even more
financially secure would be to tax all recipients equally. At present, the rich
are taxed only on the first $106,800 of income. If this cap were removed, so
the wealthy were taxed just like the less wealthy, the Social Security System
could raise benefits across the board and restore cost-of-living
adjustments."
Failure to do this means disaster for the Social Security program as we know
it. The shysters and con men on
About
Me: Producer and host of The Digital Underground and The Cyberspace
Sanctuary: A Safe House for Your Mind, Stanton has been a writer and community
broadcaster for twenty years. According to
Stealing from Social Security Is NOT a Debt Solution
By Dean Baker
The conventional wisdom among the
current generation of school reformers is that bad teachers are to blame for
the failure of many of our children to learn. Applying this logic to the current
debates over the budget and the economy, we should be pointing a big 
finger
of blame at the media.
As survey after survey shows, the vast majority of the public are incredibly ignorant of the most basic facts about the budget and the economy. If we treated their teachers in the media the way the educational reformers treat public school teachers, few economics and budget reporters would have jobs.
One needs only to pick up a newspaper or turn on the television to get examples of thoroughly awful reporting. When we hear pledges to reduce the projected deficits over the next 12 years by $2tn or $4tn, how many people have any clue how large these reductions - on which the current debt ceiling talks between President Obama and House speaker John Boehner turn - are, relative to projected spending or projected GDP over this period? (The $4tn figure is 8.7% of projected spending and 3.7% of GDP.)
How about that $14.3tn figure for
the debt ceiling? That's a really big number, really scary. So is just about
every number connected with the
Is that big? Well, the debt to
GDP ratio was over 110% after the Second World War. The
So, what's the problem? The
politicians who want to cut Social Security and Medicare obviously want the
public to believe that there is a huge problem and - due to the incompetence of
the media - they have managed to instill fear throughout the nation about this
massive non-problem.
If the media were doing their job, the public would be able to put these debt
numbers in context. And the politicians who attempted to exploit fears based on
ignorance would be subjected to ridicule. For example, when Senator John McCain
was basing his 2008 president campaign on attacking the $1m spent on creating a
They would ask him how much time
he thinks that Congress should spend scrutinizing three hundred thousandths of
1% of the federal budget. If Congress spent one minute debating every McCain
Woodstock museum-sized expenditure it would take it 6.3 years to get through
this year's budget, assuming that it was in session 24 hours a day, 365 days a
year.
In the same vein, when a politician asserts that Social Security is going
bankrupt and that there will not be anything left for her children or
grandchildren, serious reporters would ridicule her for being ignorant of the
Social Security trustees' projections. These projections show that even if nothing is ever done to change the
programme, future beneficiaries will always be able to collect a
higher benefit than current retirees. The "nothing there for our
children" would be treated as a serious gaffe, sort of like then Senator
Obama's comment before the Pennsylvania primary about working-class people
being bitter and clinging to guns and religion. The difference is that the
Social Security comment has direct relevance for policies that affect people's
lives.
When a politician complains about
President Obama's taxes strangling the economy, reporters should ask them
whether they know that taxes are less of a burden on the economy now than at
any point since the Second World War. A politician who is concerned about tax
burdens should be expected to know this.
If economic and political reporters applied the same sort of investigative zeal
to economic and budget reporting as they did to Representative Anthony Weiner's
twittered underwear picture, we would have a much better informed public. Not
only would the news stories that we see and hear be much more informative, but
politicians would be less likely to make things up to advance their political
agenda.
If politicians knew that they would pay a political price for making things up
about the budget and the economy, then they would be less likely to do it. But
we aren't likely to get competent reporters until it is as easy to fire
incompetent ones as it is to fire incompetent school teachers.
Debt Political Theater Diverts Attention
By Dennis Kucinich
The rancorous debate over the debt belies a fundamental truth of our economy --
it is run for the few at the expense of the many, that our entire government
has been turned into a 
machine
which takes the wealth of a mass of Americans and accelerates it into the hands
of the few. Let me give you some examples.
Take war. War takes the money
from the American people and puts it into the hands of arms manufacturers, war
profiteers, and private armies. The war in
Fifty percent of our discretionary spending goes for the Pentagon. A massive transfer of wealth into the hands of a few while the American people lack sufficient jobs, health care, housing, retirement security.
Our energy policies take the wealth from the American people and put it into the hands of the oil companies. We could be looking at $150 a barrel for oil in the near future.
Our environmental policy takes the wealth of the people -- clean air, clean water -- and puts it in the hands of the polluters. It's a transfer of wealth, not only from the present but from future generations as our environment is ruined.
Insurance companies, what do they do? They take the wealth from the American people in terms of what they charge people for health insurance and they put it into the hands of the few.
We have to realize what this
country's economy has become. Our monetary policy, through the Federal Reserve
Act of 1913, privatized the money supply, gathers the wealth, puts it in the
hands of the few while the Federal Reserve can create money out of nothing,
give it to banks to park at the Fed while our small businesses are starving for
capital.
Mark my words -- Wall Street cashes in whether we have a default or not. And
the same type of thinking that created billions in bailouts for Wall Street and
more than $1 trillion in giveaways by the Federal Reserve today leaves 26
million Americans either underemployed or unemployed. And nine out of ten
Americans over the age of 65 are facing cuts in their Social Security in order
to pay for a debt which grew from tax cuts for the rich and for endless wars.
There is a massive transfer of wealth from the American people to the hands of
a few and it's going on right now as America's eyes are misdirected to the
political theater of these histrionic debt negotiations, threats to shut down
the government, and willingness to make the most Americans pay dearly for debts
they did not create.
These are symptoms of a
government which has lost its way, and they are a challenge to the legitimacy
of the two-party system.
10 Things GOP Doesn't Want You to Know
By Avenging Angel
Just two weeks after he seconded
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's dire warnings about the August 2 deadline to
raise the
For his part, McConnell promised that no deal to end the GOP's hostage taking
of the
Here, then, are 10 things the GOP doesn't want you to know about the debt: (1)
Republican Leaders Agree US Default Would Be a "Financial Disaster."
In January, even Speaker John Boehner acknowledged as much: "That would be
a financial disaster, not only for our country but for the worldwide economy.
Remember, the American people on election day said, 'we want to cut spending
and we want to create jobs.' And you can't create jobs if you default on the
federal debt."
(2) Ronald Reagan tripled the
national debt. As most analysts predicted, Reagan's massive $749 billion
supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget
deficits. Combined with his rapid increase in defense spending, Reagan
delivered not the balanced budgets he promised, but record-setting debt. Even
his OMB alchemist David Stockman could not obscure the disaster with his famous
"rosy scenarios." Forced to raise taxes eleven times to avert
financial catastrophe, the Gipper nonetheless presided over a tripling of the
American national debt to nearly $3 trillion. By the time he left office in
1989, Ronald Reagan more than equaled the entire debt burden produced by the
previous 200 years of American history.
(3) George W. Bush doubled the national debt. Following in Reagan's footsteps,
George W. Bush buried the myth of Republican fiscal discipline. Inheriting a
federal budget in the black and CBO forecast for a $5.6 trillion surplus over 10
years, President George W. Bush quickly set about dismantling the progress made
under Bill Clinton. Bush's $1.4 trillion tax cut in 2001, followed by a $550
billion second round in 2003, accounted for the bulk of the yawning budget
deficits he produced.
(4) Republicans voted 7 times to raise debt ceiling for President Bush. As
Donny Shaw documented in January 2010, Republican intransigence on the debt
ceiling only began in earnest when Bush left office. The Republicans haven't
always been against increasing the federal debt ceiling. This is the first time
in recent history (the past decade or so) that no Republican has voted for the
increase. In fact, on most of the ten other votes to increase the federal debt
limit that the Senate has taken since 1997, the Republicans provided the
majority of the votes in favor.
The remaining ten things are: (5) Federal Taxes Are Now at a 60 Year Low; (6) Bush Tax Cuts Didn't Pay for Themselves or Spur "Job Creators;" (7) Rep. Paul Ryan's Budget Delivers Another Tax Cut Windfall for the Wealthy; (8) Ryan's Budget Will Require Raising Debt Ceiling - Repeatedly; (9) Tax Cuts Drive the Next Decade of Debt; (10) $3 Trillion Tab for Unfunded Wars Remains Unpaid
For the Avenging Angel's complete
explanation of each of the ten things the GOP does not want you to know about
the debt, see www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/002215.htm.
Disgruntled feels: Discombobulated! In an
interview with The Huffington Post, former Ohio 
Governor
Ted Strickland argued that President Obama and many Democrats have allowed
themselves to be pulled so far to the right in the debate over deficits and the
debt that they have effectively abandoned the Democratic brand. If you did not
know a Democrat was speaking on the issue, you could certainly not be faulted
for thinking the politician talking was a member of the GOP pushing austerity
as a remedy in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great
Depression. Understandably, grassroots Democrats and independents who voted for
change had no idea that change meant moving the country to the far right. In
fact, most, like me, probably thought the country would be pushed a bit left of
center. In any event, we did not sign up for a far right experiment. To say the
least, Democrats are discombobulated by the move to the far right being taken
by our elected officials, especially the agent of change - our president!
Disgruntled says: According to an article
by Ellen Brown published by Truthout.com titled QE2 Shocker: 
The
Whole $600 Billion Wound Up Offshore, US-based foreign banks are the real
beneficiaries of the Federal Reserve's monetary policy. The Fed's quantitative
easing was supposed to add liquidity to the market, encouraging banks to lend
to small and medium-sized business - the creators of jobs in the
Disgruntled wants to know: Social
Security is supposed to be a reliable benefit stream for seniors and disabled
citizens. For 
decades,
workers and employers have paid more into Social Security than what was paid
out in benefits. The resulting annual surpluses were borrowed by the federal
government and used like general revenue. In return, the Social Security Trust
Fund received federal government IOUs, treasury notes or some such government
credit instrument that should have been accruing interest. The notion that if
no debt ceiling agreement between Republicans and Democrats is reached by
August 2 means no Social Security checks get mailed on August 3 raises a
serious question for seniors and others. Does the disappearance of the Social
Security Trust Fund and the
Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and
Telephone Calls
Email www.michaelmoore.com...Wall Street will
not let Republicans pull the debt ceiling trigger...By Dean Baker...The tension
is building in the budget talks as the calendar closes in on the August 2
drop-dead date. According to Treasury Secretary Geithner, this is the date
where the government would no longer have the money to pay its bills and a
default on the debt would be looming. The whole debate over the debt ceiling is
silly. If congress wants to cut spending then the way to do that is to send the
president smaller spending bills. They can do that any day of the week. The
idea that Republicans in congress are going to force big cuts in the country's
most important programs - Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid - by taking
Wall Street hostage with the debt ceiling is absurd. It was only necessary for
President Obama to call their bluff. The bottom line is that the debt ceiling
is a gun pointed first and foremost at Wall Street's head. And, there is no way
on earth that Wall Street is going to let the Republicans pull the trigger.
Email http://thehill.com/...Sanders: Obama
proposal would impoverish 250,000...By Erik Wasson... 
The
Social Security Administration estimates that a proposal floated by the Obama
administration would put 245,000 people into poverty, according to an analysis
released by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). That level of impact would be felt
by 2050 if a proposal to change the way inflation is measured is adopted. The
change to the way SSA would calculate the Consumer Price Index has been floated
in debt ceiling talks between Congress and the White House. The White House has
suggested revising CPI for both the tax code and for benefits. SSA's Office of
Retirement Policy estimated that by 2030, there would be 173,400 more people
living in poverty in the