Tag: Social Security

More post election incompetence.

They forgot.  In the good cop, bad cop routine, one of them is supposed to be the “good cop.”  

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs starts off the Lame Duck post election session:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

“He would be open to having that discussion and open to listening to what the debate is on both sides of that,” said Gibbs, during an off-camera gaggle with reporters. “Obviously… making those tax cuts for the upper end permanent is something the president does not believe is a good idea.”

The issue, Gibbs said, will be a topic of discussion when the president convenes a bipartisan meeting of lawmakers at the White House in two weeks. Included in that meeting (and working dinner) will be Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cali.), incoming Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), incoming Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), and Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.).

At his press conference on Wednesday, the president expressed his first openness to date with the process of negotiating on the Bush tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Peter Orszag, right wing neocon, concern troll “deficit spending hawk,” Wall Street mouthpiece, and former Obama Administration head of Office of Budget and Management (OMB)  writes in the New York Times the day after the election, November 3, that the harvest of the last of the middle and working class entitlement programs can’t begin fast enough for his new right wing think tank benefactors at the Council on Foreign Relations.  

With the election over, it’s time to move on to new things, and the folks at the Campaign for America’s Future have asked me to do some writing about Social Security, which sounds like some big fun, so here we are.

We’re going to start with some reasonably simple stuff today, just to get your feet wet; by the time we get a few stories down the road there will be some complicated economic analysis to work through-but let’s begin today by looking a bit south.

Those who support privatizing Social Security in this country often point to Chile as an example we could follow, and that seems like a good place to get the conversation going…so set your personal WayBack Machine to Santiago, May, 1981, and let’s see what we can learn.

Miami, Florida, September 13, 2018 (FNS)-Facing pressure from voters to “do something” following the disaster caused by the privatization of Social Security, the White House today announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is awarding a $2 billion contract to the Halliburton Company for the purchase of 22,000 “cardboard condos” that will be installed in public parks around the Miami area in an effort to alleviate the problem of homelessness among the impoverished elderly.

“Having homeless senior citizens drag their appliance boxes all over the city reduces the community’s aesthetic appeal and leads to complaints”, said Halliburton spokesman Tendei Furlough. “The new modular design, combined with our ability to print attractive images on the outside of the boxes, guarantees both increased protection from winter weather and fewer complaints from affected neighborhoods.”

FEMA’s Director of Emergency Housing Resources Spike Fromula agreed: “We thought we had a real problem with homelessness in a number of our major cities after the Social Security safety net collapsed…but now, we think…well, we think we have a way to wrap the problem up in a neat little package.”

If Republicans got their Way … there would be no more Medicare.

If Republicans got their Way … you couldn’t Retire until 70.

If Republicans got their Way … they’d privatize Social Security.

If Republicans got their Way … there would be no more Corporate income tax.

If Republicans got their Way … they’d eliminate taxes on Capital gains.

If Republicans got their Way … they’d cut in half the taxes of the richest 1 percent.

If Republicans got their Way … the Bush Tax Cut for the Rich would never end.

Factlets from The Republican’s Roadmap for America’s Future:

The Ryan Budget’s Radical Priorities

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

By Paul N. Van de Water — July 7, 2010

If Republicans got their Way … Christine O’Donnell would be their new Class Treasurer!

There is a crack daylight, that may topple the Republican’s Wall of Inaction.

Voinovich breaks with GOP to push for small-business incentives

Lori Montgomery, Washington Post Staff — Sept 10, 2010

Retiring Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio) said he plans to help push a package of small-business incentives through the Senate next week, a move that would give President Obama and congressional Democrats a key victory on the economy in the final weeks before the November midterm elections.

In an interview, Voinovich said he could no longer support Republican efforts to delay the measure in hopes of winning the right to offer additional amendments. Most of the proposed GOP amendments “didn’t have anything to do with the bill” anyway, Voinovich said, and amounted merely to partisan “messaging.”

“We don’t have time for messaging,” Voinovich said. “We don’t have time anymore. This country is really hurting.”

Finally a Republican Senator with some Integrity, who is willing work for the folks, that Voted him into Office  (instead of working against their interests, for his own gain …)

On this Labor Day, the fullest definition of economic equality and fair wages is on my mind.  While on the subject, I’d like to pursue a related issue that has lately been front and center.  While we continue to debate the role of marriage and what it means to us today, I thought I’d contribute a different strain of discourse to the already deeply rutted road.  Most prevailing trains of thought opposing same-sex marriage tend to see it in only one of its many incarnations over the eons.  Opponents of marriage equality take a rose-colored glasses interpretation of an earlier era that probably never really existed.  Imagination can be deceptive.  The sacred institution was only as sacred as each individual couple regarded it.  These arguments presume that the impetus and motives of marriage were basically the same across the board and throughout the centuries.

Bipartisan Elephants, Endless Debt and Entitlements, Cats without Food … Oh My!

What IS all this fuss about?

Sometimes a picture is worth a 1000 rants.

CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE – CBO

The Long-Term Budget Outlook

JUNE 2010 – (Revised August 2010)

larger

Image: Federal Debt Held by the Public as a Percentage of Gross Domestic Product

Under Two Budget Scenarios

CBO — The Long-Term Budget Outlook (pdf)

OK sometimes not … What does that Picture mean to me?

2035, Haah!  that’s like a quarter century from now …  you got to be kidding me …

Bless her soul, Mom would’a been 96 had she lived this long. It never occurred to me that she must’ve been age six when women got the vote. I just never thought about it I guess. Anyway. She was a lifelong Democrat of the FDR / Kennedy persuasion (she grew up in the Berkshires) and an avid political junkie before there really was such a thing.

She was also…. how shall I say this…? hell on wheels if you crossed her. There was a down side to that, if you were her kid, heh, but…. man… she would have LOVED this letter (full text after the leap). It’s so …. her style. lol

If Republicans got their Way … there would be no more Medicare.

If Republicans got their Way … you couldn’t Retire until 70.

If Republicans got their Way … they’d privatize Social Security.

If Republicans got their Way … there would be no more Corporate income tax.

If Republicans got their Way … they’d eliminate taxes on Capital gains.

If Republicans got their Way … they’d cut in half the taxes of the richest 1 percent.

If Republicans got their Way … the Bush Tax Cut for the Rich would never end.

Factlets from The Republican’s Roadmap for America’s Future:

The Ryan Budget’s Radical Priorities

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

By Paul N. Van de Water — July 7, 2010

The Ryan Budget’s Radical Priorities

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

By Paul N. Van de Water — July 7, 2010

I. Summary

The Roadmap for America’s Future, which Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) – the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee – released in late January, calls for radical policy changes that would result in a massive transfer of resources from the broad majority of Americans to the nation’s wealthiest individuals.[1]

The Roadmap would give the most affluent households a new round of very large, costly tax cuts by reducing income tax rates on high-income households;

eliminating income taxes on capital gains, dividends, and interest;

and abolishing the corporate income tax, the estate tax, and the alternative minimum tax.

At the same time, the Ryan plan would raise taxes for most middle-income families,

privatize a substantial portion of Social Security,

eliminate the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance,

end traditional Medicare and most of Medicaid,

and terminate the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

It seems that Party who likes to apologize to Corporations  — for Our Oceans, getting in the way of, their Profits — is at it again!

Not only are they blaming the Victims of the Bush Great Recession, for not taking one of those non-existent Jobs (there is only 1 job to had for each 6 people that need one) —

The Leader of the GOBP Party is now telling American to brace for the Raising of the Retirement Age — his rationale: It’s the only way we’ll be able to pay for the Afghanistan War!

Jeesh!  Don’t they know that the Unemployed, have PAID FOR Unemployment Insurance,  just for times like these?

Don’t they know that American Workers have PAID FOR FICA Taxes, just so that we can retire with a meager shred of Dignity?  

Don’t they know that these are Social Contracts, that OUR Govt has MADE WITH US — in a effort to carry out the ideal “that all are created equal” —

that none should be cast aside, without hope, without opportunity, without a social safety net…

NO of course Not … the Party of No Way, has some very different type of Contracts in mind …