Social Security Should not be CUT by so Much as a Dime!

By Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

SS should not be CUT --it should be strengthened! If there is a shortfall, send the bill to the 'ruling elite' which has gotten filthy rich with all sorts of 'tax' avoidance schemes that the middle and poorer classes could only dream about! Elite money winds up offshore; but SS is a boon to the economy.

What's up? Has no one bothered to read John Maynard Keynes?

Cutting SS would plunge the nation into depression as a result of the LOST PURCHASING POWER of seniors who will be reduced to penury! Many have already been reduced to shopping at Wal-Mart, that retail 'agent' of China! What's next? A caning by J.P. Morgan?

Sorry --Obama this whole thing sounds like an EVIL GOP plot to me.

"Social Security a moral institution, Democratic strategist James Carville said.
The program has brought the rate of poverty amongst the elderly down from 30% in 1965 to 9.5%, despite a recession.

          “That is the act of a just and moral nation,” Carville said on Tuesday's The Rachel Maddow                  Show. “That about two-thirds the number of old people in this country who go to bed cold or              hungry has been reduced.”

Rebuilding the middle class by strengthening social programs and cutting health care and education costs is crucial to the upcoming election, Carville said, and many in the Beltway just don't get it.

The middle class won't vote for candidates who want to cut their Social Security to fund wars and bank bailouts, he argued.

          --James Carville: Social Security 'is the act of a just and moral nation'

Social Security is a BOON to the economy. Has no one bothered to read John Maynard Keynes? Cutting SS would plunge the nation into depression as a result of the LOST PURCHASING POWER of seniors who will be reduced to penury!

Does anyone believe that the milllions, billions, trillions that the elites have squirreled away offshore is --in any way whatsoever --driving or stimulating this economy? Sad but true --the RULING ELITES have simply exploited the failure of this nation to provide everyone graduating high school with anything more than a smattering of 'Economics' background!

Sorry --Obama this whole thing STINKS! If the budget needs to be 'balanced' take it out of the TRILLIONS that have been warehoused offshore where it does NO ONE any good! I smell a GOP RAT!

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Paul Krugman: Conscience of a Liberal

by Paul Krugman

Some readers may have noticed a recent op-ed by King and Soneji alleging that Social Security projections understate life expectancy and are therefore far too optimistic. This claim will, I’m sure, become part of what all the serious people think they know.

But the Social Security actuaries have replied (pdf), offering among other things one of the best examples I’ve ever seen of a brutally polite intellectual takedown:

King and Soneji developed their own projection methodology for mortality and made a series of assertions in their op-ed about the methods used by the Office of the Chief Actuary. As with all new entrants into this field of analysis, their work may ultimately provide value in the continuing evolution of our methods. However, the assertions in their op-ed require some response and clarification.

Oh, snap. (Or since we’re talking about social insurance, SNAP).

So yes, the Social Security Administration knows about obesity and smoking, and incorporates this into its projections. More broadly, SSA has not failed to anticipate rising life expectancy; on the contrary, it has if anything been slightly over-optimistic.

An almost unrelated note: since I am, as you can see, a devotee of adding relevant YouTube videos to blog posts, I was glad to see Jonathan Cohn bring the killer rabbit into the debt ceiling denouement — and especially gratified that I decided not to use the same thing, and went for a poker-playing cat instead. But this then raises the question: what if the Republicans bring out the holy hand grenade?

Paul Krugman, NYT

Bill Moyers Interviews Paul Krugman

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How the War Racket Means the Beginning of the End for 'America'

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Used to be --there was good news and there was bad news. Of late, the bad news is that there is no good news and there may not be any good news in the foreseeable future. Unless things change, there may not be any good news ever!

I know whose fault this is! This is the result and work of American robber barons and right wing militarists who have sold America out to China as they plot more wars of naked aggression for the purpose of seizing the oil fields of the Middle East.

Much of the plan, the legacies of Reagan, Sr. and Shrub, the three henchman of the apocalypse, is already in place

Reagan's Two Year Long Depression

It was left to Ronald Reagan to usher in a depression of some two years, the longest and worst since Hoover's Great Depression of the 1930s. This depression followed quickly on the heels of a the GOP tax cut which benefited only the upper quintile. Obviously, the 'tax cut' was not an economic stimulus as we were told it would be. The results were, in fact, the depression of two years, a contraction of the economy as a result of the transfer of wealth upward to the upper quintile. A windfall of this nature is no stimulus to invest but, rather, to transfer the gains offshore. There were no net gains in jobs. There was no Reagan-recovery. There were, rather, net losses, declines in employment. The government's own stats prove it. They are available the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Census Bureau and the U.S. Commerce Department -B.E.A.

Our Major Exports: Death and Destruction

Check the CIA's 'World Fact Book'. With the world's largest NEGATIVE Current Account Balance, the U.S. is on the bottom of the list. China is on top with the world's largest POSITIVE Current Account Balance. The downside for China is this: it must prop up the worthless U.S. dollar if it wishes to survive. Clearly, then, the war racket has done absolutely nothing for the US bottom line. The US, the right wing in particular, for all it bluster and bullshit has less than nothing to show for the many lives that were sacrificed at the alter of greed and capitalist/imperialistic ambition. I am fed up with the lies and crap! How about you?

The US now follows the Roman model of 'empire'. Admittedly, it is difficult to say which comes first --the collapse of the real economy or the commencement of empire! In the case of Rome, it seems clear that the local economy was already in trouble when Rome began its conquest of Dacia for its gold! As is the case with the U.S. today, the currency of Rome, sesterces, was worthless but as a means by which a head count could be made of those attending the gladiatorial contests in the Coliseum. Today, the U.S. dollar is propped up by China --not because China just wants to help us out; it wants to dump its crap on us. If it does not, its own over-population will enter into utter poverty, millions will starve. Chinese poohbahs will, of course, blame US. Facing starvation, China will threaten the world, if it does not already.

The New National Capital/Capitol: K-street

K-street is where the people get fucked! K-street is the best little whorehouse in Washington, the nation's 'read light district' in which the apparatus of government is pimped! K-street --not Congress --is where the bills, the laws, the policies are written, decided upon. K-street is where the 'Johns' buy the bureaucracy and decide foreign and domestic policies. K-street is where money talks, souls are sold, bullshit peddled.

K-street is where the so-called 'Jewish Lobby' (read: Israeli Lobby) dictates American foreign policy. Some have called it a marriage made in hell, in fact, a Faustian bargain, in which the soul of America is bartered or whored-out outright! What's in it for the U.S. to continue to support the increasingly fanatic, aggressive and extremist governments in Israel? The most obvious answer is this: Israel provides the convincing 'pre-text' for US oil wars in the Middle East. Big oil has said to Isreal or Israel to big oil: 'you scratch my back and I will scratch yours!'.

The Republican Party was once a moderately conservative, pro-business outfit, until it was hijacked by the oligarchy and turned into a full-on predatory machine, hiding behind the facade of hate mobilizing issues like bogus overseas threats abroad and uppity brown people and demanding women at home. Basically, any way that middle class white males could be distracted from their sinking economic status - through the diversion of a sense of superiority over others, or the supposed threat to that superior status - was employed to cover for a party whose true agenda was to quietly produce the greatest transfer of wealth in all of human history.

Having succeeded dramatically, they are back at it again. It is now transparent, for anyone who cares to look, that the ugly tea party movement in America is an invention of the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch, Dick Armey and their sick ilk, once again mobilizing a boatload of fools who are angry, but too stupid to know quite why. This explains their endless rhetoric about the evils of the federal government, and their simultaneous desire to keep their Social Security and Medicare benies. It also explains their unmatched idiocy in serving as tools for their own destruction. If they succeed, they fail. If they get their champions elected, they lose their government-provided (Shhhh!) goodies. Brilliant.

In any case, the takeover of the GOP by Serious Money is now well into its second stage. Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, it is. Seriously, what is the next step after this one fails to provide any long-term solutions to what ails America, as most assuredly will be the case? For a decade or three now, regressives in America have been showing that they are capable of anything. Which more or less answers that question, doesn't it?

If you're willing to savage military icons like John McCain, Max Cleland and John Kerry in order to win elections - and especially after you get away with it every time - you're willing to do anything. If you're willing to mock the 9/11 widows as scheming opportunists, you're willing to do anything. If you're willing to don a tuxedo and joke about missing WMD at a press banquet in Washington, just as you're telling the American military's adversaries in Iraq to "bring it on", you're willing to do anything.

--Our Long National Nightmare Isn't Over, It's Just Beginning, David Michael Green

War is a Racket

WAR is a racket.

It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few – the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

--War Is a Racket, General Smedly Butler, Two-Time Congressional Medal of Honor Recipient, Major General Smedley D. Butler,
USMC, Retired

Conspiracies are how things get done. Some are legal; some are not. A 'corporation', for example, is a conspiracy made legal by 'charter'. Corporations were described by St. Thomas More in his 'Utopia':

I can perceive nothing but a certain conspiracy of rich men procuring their own commodities under the name and title of the commonwealth.

They invent and devise all means and crafts, first how to keep safely, without fear of losing, that they have unjustly gathered together, and next how to hire and abuse the work and labour of the poor for as little money as may be. These devices, when the rich men have decreed to be kept and observed for the commonwealth’s sake, that is to say for the wealth also of the poor people, then they be made laws.But these most wicked and vicious men, when they have by their insatiable covetousness divided among themselves all those things, which would have sufficed all men, yet how far be they from the wealth and felicity of the Utopian commonwealth? Out of the which, in that all the desire of money with the use of thereof is utterly secluded and banished, how great a heap of cares is cut away! How great an occasion of wickedness and mischief is plucked up by the roots!

--Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), Utopia

If you are still drinking the Kool-aid, go to Findlaw, where the search term 'conspiracy' of itself will get you 690 cases. Go to the Cornell University Law Library. Type in the single search term 'conspiracy'! Among the hundreds (possibly thousands of cases) you will find No. 03-3156,UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,APPELLEE v.ANTONIO N. TABRON, A/K/A FAT CAT,APPELLANT.

The transfer of wealth upward is deliberate. It's how the the 'pay-offs' are laundered. Initially, it was the top 20 percent who benefited as charts dating to the beginning of the Clinton administration indicate and prove. Clinton succeeded in reversing the trend. It would have been a lasting legacy, Clinton's finest hour, had not the regime of George W. Bush reversed the reverse and resumed the payoff as evinced in the inexorable trend upward.

‎I don't know who it was who said that Satan's biggest 'trick' was convincing the world that he did not exist. The traitors of the 'American' right wing have, in fact, sold out America: to the ruling one percent who alone have benefited from GOP 'tax cuts', tax cuts which are inexorably followed by job losses if not recessions/depressions. The government's own statistics prove the undeniable trend. As there is no defense rational defense, the meme that is drummed into you from the media liars and blow-hards like Limbaugh deride the very existence of 'conspiracies' and, thus, from an over generalized assumption for which there is not a shred of evidence is deduced a specific conclusion: 'conspiracies do not exist'.

This is how the right wing thinks. While sane and/or scientifically inclined people will observe first and conclude later, the right wing impaired will believe based upon prejudices and/or whatever makes them feel good. They will shoe-horn reality into the mold; they will work backward from foregone conclusions. They will literally reverse 'cause and effect' and mistake one for the other. They will shoot first and ask questions later! They will not tolerate any fact that proves them wrong. In fact, they are not only wrong, they are wrong-headed! And it will prove to be the end of America!

War is a Racket

If WTC 7 Was a Controlled Demolition, so were the Twins!

Note: The Existentialist Cowboy is currently bombarded by spam from a lunatic name caller of the right wing ilk! Therefore, comments are moderated. Intelligent comments are, as always, welcome! Ad hominem attacks, spam and psychotic drivel is not! Eventually, the offending party will be committed to an asylum and we adults can once again engage in intelligent, articulate dialogue. Thanks for understanding.

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Why The GOP Plots to Steal Your Social Security

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

If Social Security were not working, if Social Security were not solvent, Wall St 'fat cats' would not be scheming to steal it! Social Security is in danger of becoming a victim of its own success.

GOP supporters of the big banksters propose that Social Security be 'privatized', a code word for: "let's let the big banksters play monopoly with that money. Let's export that money, squirrel it away in offshore bank accounts where working folk will never see it or benefit from it!"

Like monies blown up and/or otherwise 'wasted' in war, monies tagged 'social security' will be secured for speculative or destructive use by the very, very rich, the only people to have benefited from ruinous wars of aggression against Iraq, et al. Should this come to pass, not a cent of that money will go toward the creation of a single job in the U.S.

The fat cats are not worried about whether Social Security works or not! That's just eye wash, a plausible sounding 'talking point', a pre-text by which the money may be seized, or, 'privatized'! The fat cats do not care about you or your retirement. If you think they do, you are incredibly and hopelessly naive.

Bush, were he not in hiding, may call this 'class warfare'. And so it is! It IS class warfare and the GOP has been waging it against anyone not financing GOP campaigns with $millions$.

What would/will/have the ruling elites do/done with your money? So far --death and destruction tops the list of America's last remaining industries. Death and destruction are, in fact, out chief exports. That's why the U.S. is at the bottom of the CIA's World Factbook - Current Account Balance with the world's largest, negative 'Current Account Balance', often called the balance of trade deficit. China is on top with the world's largest positive current account balance.

That outcome is easily traced to treasonous deals struck by George Bush Sr in advance of Nixon's largely ceremonial visit to the Forbidden City. It was later, as I recall, that Bush Sr puked in the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister, perhaps remembering the sickening deal struck earlier with China.

While China exports product, the U.S. exports death and destruction. Neither have enriched anyone but members of the U.S. ruling elite of just one percent of the total population. Their numbers are growing smaller as their 'shares' of total wealth have increased exponentially. It is this elite one percent --and only this elite-- who benefit from U.S. wars of aggression in the middle east. It is only this elite one percent who benefited from Reagan/Bush tax cuts and largesse. It is only this elite one percent who benefited from whopping tax cuts beginning with the Reagan tax cut of 1982. Class warfare? You betcha!

In the meantime, GOP types demagogue another issue: Immigration. Disingenuously, it is claimed that immigrants will steal American jobs. That might be possible, even credible were there still American jobs to steal! Check the CIA's World Fact Book again. Pop quiz time: what does the U.S. produce and export? Where is the great American steal industry? What happened to the great American automotive industry? Where are jobs that may be stolen?

The GOP exported your job, primarily to China, the biggest beneficiary. And what about IT? Those jobs went to India! Well, you may say, there is always 'tele-marketing'! Sorry --even telemarketing has been exported! To India!

Again --check the CIA's World Fact Book, previously cited, is the proof and result of that fact! The US trails the rest of the world in almost every industrial category. Steel and electronics were exported during the Reagan years. Automobile manufacturing left Detroit shortly afterward. Chrysler was in trouble in the 70s. It was never coincidental that US industry seemed to have vanished at about the same time Ronald Reagan waged war against labor and won! Uncle Hitler could not have done a better job.

According to the CIA's The World Factbook - Current Account Balance our jobs have been exported to China which is listed as having the world's largest positive current account balance. Simply, that represents the transfer of US wealth to China, primarily by way of Wal-Mart, the economic Kudzu that ate the US economy.

Democrats have occupied the executive but eight of the last thirty years. The GOP, therefore, owns the decline and fall of both the American republic and its short lived empire. GOP policies are the cause of the collapse made even worse by the calamitous and lost war of aggression in Iraq. Aggravating the crash are the lasting legacy and the bone-headed policies of Reagan, Bush, and Shrub!

We are living the consequences of several major, pernicious trends that began with the inauguration of Ronald Reagan:

• the rich began to get much, much richer and the poor much, much poorer
• the labor movement was subverted and all but destroyed;
• within but a few years the US would 'boast' of the world's largest negative 'current account balance';
• US industries of all types declined or disappeared entirely;
• acts of terrorism against US interests increased.

Americans are harmed from the rise of leeches like Wal-Mart:

• Despite bringing in over $378 billion last year, Wal-Mart repeatedly underpays its American workforce. More than 80 wage & hour lawsuits, including a recently certified class action lawsuit in California, are currently pending against the company. Plus, it faces more than 200 discrimination lawsuits for unfair promotion practices, pay discrepancies and other issues, including the nation’s largest workplace gender discrimination lawsuit. By failing to fairly compensate its employees, Wal-Mart cheats states out of income tax revenues.
• Wal-Mart’s low wages means store employees have little or no disposable income to spend to stimulate the economy. Think about what even a small raise for Wal-Mart’s 1 million+ workers would mean nationally, or what it would mean to your city or town if everyone at your local Wal-Mart got a raise.
• Wal-Mart sources the vast majority of its products from countries overseas, meaning most of the cost of a given Wal-Mart product doesn’t go into the U.S. economy. Rather than boosting the U.S. economy, Wal-Mart has played a major role in exporting U.S. manufacturing jobs to countries with low labor and environmental standards. Meanwhile, the company has embraced unions in its Chinese stores and has negotiated with them to raise Chinese salaries. Apparently, what is good enough for China is not good enough here at home.
• Wal-Mart underfunds its health care plan and cuts corners whenever possible, forcing many of its employees to postpone care, thus decreasing their productivity and increasing the eventual cost of their treatment. In desperation, many of them rely on state-sponsored care and drain yet more funds from American communities. That means when Wal-Mart employees end up in emergency rooms, it’s U.S. taxpayers who end up footing the bill. If Wal-Mart were truly interested in stimulating the economy, it would begin to adequately fund its health care plan and take care of its own Associates.
• Wal-Mart routinely dodges state and local taxes, meaning money spent at a Wal-Mart store won’t end up in your community. Wal-Mart actively works to challenge property tax assessments and creates complex real estate arrangements to obscure how much taxes the company owes. When Wal-Mart dodges its tax burden, it takes precious revenues away from cities and states to pay for roads, schools and other services. In turn, individual taxpayers are forced to pay more to make up the difference (which takes more money out of their pockets) or get by with less.

--The Huffington Post, Why Wal-Mart Does Not Strengthen Our Economy

Money spent at Wal-Mart winds up in China! Monies thrown at the ruling elite who don't need a 'bailout' winds up in offshore accounts and the purchase of merchandise not produced in the United States. $billions$ are thus exported to be forever lost to the US economy, a loss no less important than $billions$ that are unfortunately spent at Wal-Mart.

--Why Tax Cuts and Ruinous War Make this Crisis Worse Than the 'Great Depression'

How the War on Iraq Continues to Depress the US Economy

It is naively suggested that the 'defense industry'--the MIC --creates jobs and stimulates the economy. In fact, the US is left with a morally moribund economy built up around a handful of robber baron corporations like Halliburton, it's subsidiary KBR and, of course, Murder Inc., otherwise called Blackwater USA.

What industries are left to America?

Answer: industrialized death and destruction! If you wish to build an entire economy upon death itself, wars of naked aggression, war crimes and outright murder, then this is definitely the way to go. But it is not a recipe upon which a viable, growing economy is based. It is not a recipe upon which a moral society is built! It is not a recipe with which a nation's future is secured, it's people productively employed or even made safe!

There is a choice to be made between 'gun's and 'butter'. Hitler tried it, invading Poland for the coal and prospects for coal liquifaction. As Bushco implied that all Arabs were 'terrorists', he forgot to mention his own business partners --Bin Laden (yep! the Cave Dweller) himself and Khalid bin Mahfouz who built a huge billion dollar plus mansion in River Oaks, a very, very posh neighborhood very near downtown Houston. Bush didn't have any problems with 'Arabs' when he was in 'bidness' with them. [pumping oil and pumping ho's] The original source for all that is the Houston Chronicle which published a series of exposes in the early 90s. Too bad, no one bothered to read them.

For additional info, I suggest the following links:

Why the GOP Nurtures Lies and Myths about Ronald Reagan

Why Tax Cuts and Ruinous War Make this Crisis Worse Than the 'Great Depression'

How the U.S. went from 'World's Number One Exporter of Terrorism' to Bankrupt

An excerpt:

Official US Army documents detail the extent to which the US has become addicted to the export of death and destruction. According to that [US Army] document, the US leads the world in the manufacture, sale and distribution of WMD, the use of 'terrorist' tactics and PSYOPS, and overt acts of aggression that when done by smaller nations are called 'terrorism'. ...

How Much Was Fox Paid to Shill Bush's War Crime in Iraq?

How K Street Pimps America

Wall Street Pulls Off the Biggest Heist in World History

An excerpt:

US Taxpayers have underwritten and/or are committed to a transfer of some 8.6 trillion dollars to Wall Street [see: 8.6 Trillion was a Drop in the Bucket]. As no 'bailout' has yet done anything but enrich Wall Street 'robber barons' who have invested their windfalls offshore, I propose that Wall Street get no more bailout monies whatsoever. I propose that the government divide up that 8.6 trillion up among all the citizens of the United States. Your share is over twenty-eight thousand dollars. I will take my share now, thank you!

If this kind of bailout were put into the hands of the folk who really drive the economy with their purchases of homes, cars, meals and clothing, the economy would literally turn around overnight. During the Great Depression, John Maynard Keynes proposed that the government would do much, much worse than simply putting 'pound notes' in Mason jars, burying them in a landfill and letting people dig them up. Keynes was not kidding. Clearly, his proposals would have worked while every cockamamie GOP plan since Ronald Reagan's depression of some two years following his tax cut of 1982 has failed. [and failed miserably!]

What Happens When Your Paycheck Comes from China Why this Crisis May be Worse than the Great Depression

Some excerpts:

About one percent of the nation owning more than about 90 percent of the rest of us combined not only foresaw the impending crash but planned to benefit from it. GOP types have traditionally gotten rich by playing 'last man out loses'! A race to be first to 'get out' has triggered many a panic creating bargains to be picked up, fortunes to be made on the inevitable upside. The big difference now is that --this time --there may not be an upside.

...

GOP 'trickle down' policies have had the measurable effect of enriching just one percent of the nation's population. [sources: Bureau of Labor Stats, US Dept of Commerce-BEA, Census Bureau] When the GOP has been caught holding the blood-dripping dagger over the corpse I am in no mood to listen to crap like: 'but Democrats are 'bad' too!' Not this time! Democrats were in office but eight years out of thirty! But in those short eight years the trend in which wealth flows upward was --in fact --reversed only to be undone by Bush Jr. Monies/Capital/Wealth 'trickling up' to just one percent of the population is forever lost to the US economy because it is, most often, squirreled away in offshore tax havens. Wealth thus lost results in 'contraction' of the economy, in other words, recession/depression. NO GOP TAX CUT HAS EVER CREATED A SINGLE JOB EVER! [Read anything by John Maynard Keynes]

...

It was not so long ago that a Democratic president had left to his incompetent GOP successor a whopping budget surplus, a growing economy, the lowest unemployment in decades, and --for Republicans --the most worrisome trend of all: the rich were no longer getting richer as they had done during the Reagan/Bush years. I can think of only one group of people who are most miserable when times are good! REPUBLICANS! Historically, Republicans have always benefited from recessions.

1. Recessions are not caused by declining stock markets but seem always to be accompanied by them and are often predicted by them. Republicans play the game of 'last man out wind', taking their profits in numbers that often cause the panic. Only insiders benefit. Others are forced to take their losses.
2. A depressed market becomes an opportunity for the elite oligarchs to get back in. This elite, in fact, controls the market. Everyone else is exploited by the oligarchs.
3. It is easy to make money 'selling short' if you have an insider's knowledge of the market. That fortunes were made short-selling subsequent to the 911 attacks seems to me persuasive, perhaps conclusive evidence that 911 was an inside job. What was known by whom and when? No wonder Bush covered up 911. The answer to those questions would have exposed a murderous conspiracy, perhaps 'insiders' inside Bush's criminal and treasonous administration.
4. Unemployment always rises during times of recession. Should they survive, companies will hire from a larger labor pool at lower wages, lower salaries, reduced benefits, and less vacation or sick time. The GOP despises the Clinton years --not because they were bad but because they were good years and fondly remembered. Europe after the Black Death has that much in common with the Clinton years. The labor supply had been depleted by plague. A would-be employer often had to accede to a worker's demands--better working conditions, more money, a place to live! The serfs had been freed and it was the beginning of the end for Feudalism. I had hoped that a less traumatic cataclysm would have already freed modern day "corporate serfs." Alas! My hopes are dashed. If the US survives at all, you can rest assured that the ruling elite will hire from an impoverished and growing labor pool. Wages and salaries are sure to be inadequate and, as a result, the 'recovery' (should there be one) will be slower for it.
5. Only the oligarchs benefit when many businesses go out of business during depressions which have the effect of 'weeding out' the competition, consolidating oligarchical gains. A conservative, therefore, is someone who supports a free market when it benefits him and the oligarchy at every other time.
6. Recessions are not always accompanied by a decline in prices. As many businesses fail, competition is decreased and higher prices result. Given the demand for a particular product, a company may actually earn more money selling fewer units. The difference comes out of your ass. Such demand is called: inelastic, i.e. revenues increase as prices increase --even if total sales should fall.

Unless someone blows the whistle or exercises some clout, the increasingly tiny elite of just one percent of the US population will be even richer at the end of this ruinous and tragic financial collapse. You can be sure the oligarchs foresaw the collapse and hastened it. You can be sure that they alone have and will continue to benefit from it as they have benefited from every other such crisis in US history.

Depressions are defined by a 'contraction' of the supply of money. If so, where has all the money gone?. As point out, much if not most has been squirreled away in offshore bank accounts in anticipation of a domestic collapse. But much of that money didn't really exist. It was just paper. It became fashionable to consider 'debt' as money. But debt is not money and never was. Anyone who has ever considered the significance of the accounting equation --capital equals assets minus liabilities knows the truth of it. Nor is 'debt' money for those holding the paper. Loans are good only when backed up by collateral or, in some cases, one's earnings i.e, his/her ability to re-pay. As in all crashes, a 'bill' has come due but cannot be paid.

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GOP STILL Plans to Steal Your Social Security

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

The ascension (apotheosis?) of every GOP 'President' is inevitably accompanied by much GOP salivating over the prospects of getting their greedy, crooked mitts on your Social Security. Thus it was just over eight years ago when George W. Bush assumed (and I do mean 'assumed') the highest office in the land. Rest assured, despite the financial implosions of late, the GOP still plots to rob you blind, screw you silly and leave you a worthless slug on the night stand!

The GOP licked its greedy chops as the stupidest man, the grossest idiot since Warren Harding raised his hand and dared to swear on a holy book! The same gang of mendacious robber barons who made fortunes short-selling stocks on 911, profited from mass murder, and, later, plunged this nation into a new 'Great Depression' saw in the rise of George W. Bush another opportunity to steal your Social Security and buy Baltic Avenue with it!

Unlike GOP's 'trickle down' theory --pie in the sky but only if you are already very, very wealthy --Social Security did precisely what it was intended to do! It lived up to its billing, perhaps exceeded it! It is endangered not because it failed but because it succeeded! It is targeted now because the upper one percent of the population which owns more that about 95 percent of the rest of us combined is eager to seize control of ALL of the nation's wealth. Keep in mind --these are the arrogant bankers and snot nosed whiz kids who short sold stocks on 911!

Social Security is the bright spot. It has maybe some mild financial problems, several decades out, and here we are—he [Bush] wants a crisis there, partly to distract from the very real crises in other places, and there you go.

AMY GOODMAN: Paul Krugman, can you explain how Social Security works? Because it’s not just President Bush. If he was raising questions about it with a little megaphone on the steps of the White House, it would not have the kind of effect it was having without all of the media, it seems, amplifying the idea that Social Security is broken. It’s bankrupt.

PAUL KRUGMAN: Right. And of course, that’s really a question about the media, not about Social Security. Social Security is a program which has been traditionally run. It looks like a retirement fund, and it is not exactly. What it really is is a government program with a dedicated tax. We take the payroll tax and it’s used to pay benefits to retirees. And 20-plus years ago, the commission led by Alan Greenspan said, you know, we are going to have this problem as the baby boomers reach retirement age. We will have a higher ratio of retirees to workers, and we better get ready for it. Social Security, the payroll tax was increased. There were some other things, a small rise in the retirement age set in motion. So that Social Security would run a surplus, which would be used to accumulate a trust fund, and this would tithe us over, some ways into the aging of the population. And that on its own accounting is working just fine. I mean, one of the things that we need to know is that the estimates of the day at which the trust fund runs out, just keep on receding further into the future, because the program is doing so well at running surpluses.

--Paul Krugman, Economist, Published Comments on Democxracy Now

It was not sufficient that GOP policies had enriched only the very, very rich. As a result, just one percent of the nation now owns more than some 95 percent of the rest of us combined! But the greedy bastards wanted to own all of it! They wanted your retirement! They wanted the monies you paid into Social Security over the course of your lifetime! Joe the Plumber recently called Social Security a joke --not because he understands why it is coveted by the GOP. He is merely the recipient of the 'memo'. Stealing your Social Security is still very high on the GOPs list of great things it wants to fuck up permanently! We should take Joe and Palin seriously. The world is endangered by its idiots.

Joe the Plumber may be the GOP 'plug in' du jour! They act in consort like the Borg. They are set up in 'cells' like the 'terrorists' they would have us believe they hate so much. The GOP is not loyal to the principles of our founding; GOP attack dogs attack 'liberals', progressives, and the just plain ornery folk--like ME! And for all the wrong reasons! Because of this 'backward thinking', these misplaced values and priorities we keep losing unwinnable wars of naked aggression, wars that should never have begun in the first place. Because of it, we are now financially and morally bankrupt! Now --the GOP wants a bailout: YOUR Social Security!

Now --what if the GOP had succeeded already? Simply --the Social Security trust fund would be collapsed and millions of seniors would be lucky to find a place to set up a tent!

Let's put the GOP's fraudulent scheme to steal Social Security into perspective.

Social Security routinely runs a surplus, call it a profit if you will! It is this 'surplus' that is coveted by Wall Street! They want to plunder your monies as Bush plunder the taxes you pay every year as a good citizen! The GOP and Wall Street barons want to 'speculate' with the only retirement that millions will ever have! They want to enrich themselves on the interest and/or returns! Do you really think these greedy, latter-day Gordan Gecko's have your interests at heart? Not a frickin' chance!

During George W. Bush's first term I wrote and posted the following on NPR's infamous 'How's Bush Doing' board:

The crisis in 2015 -2018 won't be Social Security! It will be, rather, the utter bankruptcy of the United States and the profligate, incompetent policies of George Bush!

Now --if you are under 20 and still believe yourself immortal, my remarks will mean little to you. But here they are: knowing what we now now about the crookedness, the utter incompetence of an administration that I believe betrayed the people and their Constitution, aren't you glad we did NOT entrust those bastards with farming out the only retirement that millions might ever see to the greedy, shallow, mendacious liars that run Wall Street with their fascist buddies in DC?

You Give Me Real Money and I Will Give You a Worthless Piece of Paper!

It was said at the time that the Wall Street experts would actually turn a profit on YOUR money. Oh! I get it! I give you my money and you give me a worthless piece of paper! Uh Huh! I would have liked to write that time and events proved me correct but, in fact, the crash happened even sooner than I expected or predicted. Anyway --aren't you glad Bush did not steal your money?

It was said that the experts on Wall Street could 'invest' your monies. Sure! So can I Send me a check? I have lots of places I could put YOUR money! Fact is, you don't need no steenkin experts! Everyone can set up private accounts while you still have a job, that is before the GOP economy crashed and burned. My advice at the time was:

...you can still have Social Security to fall back on should GOP policies utterly destroy the stock market.

Keep in mind that I wrote that italicized sentence in 2003. I saw what the GOP had in mind and what has, in fact, come to pass. Given the global financial debacle, what logical rationale is there for incurring an additional debt of some 4.5 trillion dollars? Would it have anything to do with the fact that the truly elite (just one percent of the US population) are currently picking up the bargains and lickin' their greedy chops. They are as we write feasting upon the carcasses!

The Cure'll Kill Ya!

Right wing assaults on Social Security are of the 'stealth' kind, advertised as efforts to 'save' Social Security! As we would say in Texas: "Wah hale! The cure'll kill ya''! The assumption that the GOP wants to save Social Security or the retirement of this nation's elderly in ANY form is naive. As much was admitted by smarmy Dick Armey who admitted to Wall Street Week that he had been trying to abolish Social Security for the last thirty years.

There are several things wrong with "Privatization" in other words "corporatization":

• Why 'corporatize Social Security when it is, in fact, working just fine as it is'? If I should want a 'provate account' what is preventing me from doing so? When millions have recently lost every penny in 'private accounts', what --please tell me --is the attraction they hold? What raison d'etre exists but to further enrich the cronies on Wall Street?
• All government need do to fix Social Security is to rescind the profligate tax cuts since Ronald Reagan, tax cuts which failed to create a single new job, failed to increase tax revenues, failed to increase capital expenditures and expansions as promised by "supply side" bullshit!
• "Privatization", in fact, 'corporatization', is just GOPSPEAK for you give me real money which will enrich ONLY Wall Street insiders and I will give you a worthless piece of paper!
• Besides --Social Security may very well be the only government program that is currently turning a "profit"!

There is NO crisis!

Social Security was an easy target of conservative demagogues. (I know --that's redundant) Slimy ilk like Rush Limbaugh are not merely liars, they attack reason itself, the very processes by which fact and truth are determined. Latter day "conservatives" think differently and, therefore, arrive at false conclusions for the wrong reasons. Listening to Limbaugh, one is tempted to believe that "two" versions of the human brain have evolved. But take heart --when "God" passed out brains, "we" got the version that works. Limbaugh and his adoring ilk got the one that will be recalled, version 13.666!

Those who would make a bargain with Satan will have to live --and die --with a really, really bad deal!

During the so-called "Republican Revolution", when the GOP staged a budget stand-off with Clinton, it was clear that this new breed of so-called "conservatives", in truth, subversive radicals, viewed the long practiced art of compromise as synonymous with defeat. Their inflexibility backfired! Clinton won, leading to the eventual and much deserved disgrace and downfall of Newt Gringrich. Would that he had taken the GOP with him into hell!Someone forgot to place a convenient revolver on his nightstand! But Newt would not have done the right thing.

Rush and his ilk have popularized fallacy, celebrated anti-intellectualism, and sought to make it 'cool' to be stupid! Limbaugh wallows in sloppy thinking and appeals to our most ignoble motives. He personifies demagoguery, oozes duplicity! He is smarm itself. Hearing Limbaugh, one does one's best to suppress the urge to puke or walk on all-fours!

Stupidity is the devil. Look in the eye of a chicken and you'll know. It's the most horrifying, cannibalistic, and nightmarish creature in this world.

--Werner Herzog

Herzog has not yet looked into the eyes of a gopper, more terrifying than chickens! It may sound oxymoronic to speak of 'intelligent conservatives', neither intelligent nor truly conservative. Real conservatives would never have tolerated the astronomical deficits run up by Mssrs Reagan and Bush Jr. There must surely be some conservatives still smart enough to understand that the demagogic demonization of 'liberals, liberals' leads inexorably to a one-party, fascist, totalitarian state. Therefore, we must conclude that that is, in fact, the hidden agenda. They only pretend to be stupid and, admittedly, they do a good job of it.

Conservatives prefer a one party, fascist state in which the office of President is replaced with 'Der Fuhrer'! Will they be so enthusiastic 'when the last law [is] was down' and Der Fuhrer turns 'round on them? A fanatic GOP 'fuhrer' need only cite Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes who said "Three generations of imbeciles are enough" to justify the round up, encampment and wholesale disposal of people they don't like!

Save the children

Throughout the conservative movement and the ranks of Limbaugh's mis-informed minions there is an appalling ignorance of history that betrays this nation's utter failure to educate its young. Texas is the best example and most notable. Under Bush Jr and his successor, Rick Perry, Texas now beats out Mississippi for DEAD LAST in 'high school graduations'.

Find the Cockroach

Failing to graduate high school is a guarantee that you will lead a life of poverty or crime or both! It is not coincidental that Texas --thanks to the GOP --is called the 'gulag state of Texas for the growth of its corporate run prison system, in truth a fascist gulag that is paid handsomely from the public trough to warehouse the millions of children who were --in fact --left behind to starve, fail and be warehoused by the fascists in Texas. To save these children, I urge that Texas be invaded and occupied until a responsible and competent government can lock up the current fascist regime and restore the 'rule of law' there.

There is an outrageous lack of outrage about this corporate take-over and occupation of Texas. What can be said of a population so addled, misinformed, uniformed and soporific that it doesn't even notice when it has been screwed without so much as a tip on the table? Does anyone in Texas care that their state has been stolen and is now run by Nazis? Clue for Texans: the corporate fat cats in skyscrapers in New York and Houston do not give a shit about you nor Hank Williams nor Larry Gatlin! You've been had! Wake the fuck up!

The American psychologist tasked with preventing Nazi war criminals from offing themselves before they could be duly hanged, said that "evil" was the utter lack of empathy! You find precisely that throughout the GOP rank and file --Rush Limbaugh's adoring throng. These 'people' defended torture and and state-sponsored murder at Abu Ghraib! They are short-sighted. They will not understand that if anyone can be victimized by unrestrained state power, so too, can they! No one is safe as long as a fascist holds so much as the office of dog catcher!

Tomorrow Belongs to Me!

People have an unrealistic idea of "evil"! Apparently, evil is a cartoon caricature --gleaming eyes, horns, pitchfork, snarls, drooling, and incantations to Satan, Bush Jr, or the Skull and Bones. No! Evil is Reinhard Heydrich conducting a gourmet luncheon meeting of Reich bureaucrats about how best to make legal the mass murder of European jews! Evil is Dick Cheney having a meeting with this 'Energy Task Force' and carving up the oil fields of Iraq before Bush's 911 would give them the pretext to invade! On both occasions, I believe, a quite civilized lunch and coffee were served amid veddy, veddy witty conversation! As Hannah Arendt said, evil is banal!

Had Heydrich and his Nazis succeeded, they would have gloated, patted each other on the back! What jolly good fellows they all were! They would have shared a few brews and toasted the 'Final Solution'. Heil Mein Fuhrer! They might have sang: Deutschland Uber Alles, The Nazi National Anthem or Tomorrow Belongs to Me! They were, after all, just good ol' boys ridding the world of 'vermin'. Or --they were all just good ol' boys hoping to get the terrorists from between them and 'all that oil!"

The GOP celebration of shortsighted, pyrrhic victories will in the longer term destroy America if it has not does so already. Certainly --the America that I knew is already destroyed. The Bill of Rights means very little even now with Obama's victory. I have yet to hear a resounding denunciation from this administration with regard to Bush's assault upon the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. America without the Bill of Rights is nothing! Without the Bill of Rights, the US is just another huge, unfeeling, corporate dominated bureaucracy!

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it!

--Georges Santayana, American Philosopher

We are, thus, condemned! Humankind has been at war since our evolution beyond the "hunter/gatherer" stage. Since someone decided that the land upon which he grew a crop was his, war has been incessant. Because "winners" procreate, the "war" gene is reinforced over generations. That explains why history repeats itself and 'facts' mean very little or nothing at all! DNA will trump reason and facts every time. Those most enthralled by inherited and irrational war mongering are of the same demographic segment who would discount evolution on religious or superstitious grounds.

The 'conservative' hostility towards intellectuals is blind to obvious parallels with other fascist states past and present.

Demagogue: One who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots.

--H. L. Mencken

And Voltaire said:

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities!

--Voltaire

Voltaire's statement is not just a well-phrased aphorism chosen because it sounds 'literary'. It could be stated as a mathematical formula when 'atrocities' are actually counted and made a 'statistic', when popular myths and/or outright lies and falsehoods are identified and correlated demographically! Think of it! With such a formula, an enlightened state could identify those states and territories most likely to nurture a state-sponsored mass murder, a state sponsored torture, a state sponsored war of naked aggression as we have most recently witnessed by the United States of America. My country! May God help us all!

At last, I recommend one read Voltaire. When Voltaire learned of Catholic atrocities in Toulouse, he literally papered Europe with his polemics --so outraged was he! Voltaire was no effete 'scholoar'. Today, he would be a kick ass blogger, an activist, a gonzo, counter-culture journalist like Hunter Thompson, or, more likely, an acerbic latter-day H. L. Mencken pooh-poohing fundies down in Dayton! He would be a thorn in the GOP's sorry hide. He would skewer the liars on K-Street and Wall Street! He would laugh at the devil himself and wither him with a phrase!

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A New Fat Cat-Government Conspiracy to Loot Social Security

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Under the cover of 'Economic Crisis', the Axis of Wall Street, K-street, and the GOP schemes to loot the Social Security Trust fund. This axis of evil wants to use the Social Security trust fund to 'bailout' the crooked banks who created the financial crisis to begin with. When times were good under Clinton, we were told that Social Security had to be scrapped. The trust fund was running out of money, we were told. Now, when times are bad, they are telling us that Social Security needs to be scrapped because it is a success.

The 'trust fund' that we had been told was going broke is coveted because it was NOT going broke. It is now seen as a means by which greedy, incompetent and failing banks can be bailed out! Would the greedy bastards go after a bankrupt program? I don't think so! To the greedy, incompetent bankers who have already squirreled away billions of bailout bucks offshore, I say: you give me the money you secretly transferred out of the country and let me do something constructive with it!

If I were Barack Obama, I would investigate and charge thousands of Wall Street Insiders with insider trading, fraud, theft, and Enron-style accounting. It may be fitting to hold these trials in the Superdome. New Orleans could be rebuilt with admission prices, season tickets, and ancillary rights.

Proponents of this outright theft of YOUR money, argue that this is the way the government should 'recover' billions that have been wasted so far 'bailing out' the very banks who created the crisis to begin with. These venal fat cats have targeted your Social Security Trust fund, Medicare, and Medicaid. They have targeted it for theft! Those wanting to loot Social Security now had supported Bush's plans to 'save Social Security' by destroying it.

Bush had wanted to replace government-guaranteed retirement benefits with private accounts that would have been subject to the whims of Wall Street. What if Bush's attack on Social Security had succeeded? Social Security would most certainly have been kaput by now --a victim of Bush's incompetent handling of the American economy.

In the meantime, Bush's 'bailouts' have done no good whatsoever. Why? Like GOP taxation and fiscal policies, the Bush 'bailouts' were 'trickle down' bailouts that benefited all the wrong people. None of the 'Bush bailout' money found its way into the economy in ways that would stimulate growth, create jobs or encourage consumer spending. Rather, billions wound up in offshore in tax havens maintained by the increasingly tiny elite what has gotten exponentially richer --at your expense. This trend began with Ronald Reagan's tax cut of 1982. Now --the same crooks, liars and idiots who alone benefited from Ronald Reagan's incompetent economic policies have targeted your money for outright theft.

These players are promoting a tricky way to whack Social Security benefits, but to do it behind closed doors so the public cannot see what's happening or figure out which politicians to blame. The essential transaction would amount to misappropriating the trillions in Social Security taxes that workers have paid to finance their retirement benefits. This swindle is portrayed as "fiscal reform." In fact, it's the political equivalent of bait-and-switch fraud.

Defending Social Security sounds like yesterday's issue--the fight people won when they defeated George W. Bush's attempt to privatize the system in 2005. But the financial establishment has pushed it back on the table, claiming that the current crisis requires "responsible" leaders to take action. Will Obama take the bait? Surely not. The new president has been clear and consistent about Social Security, as a candidate and since his election. The program's financing is basically sound, he has explained, and can be assured far into the future by making only modest adjustments.

But Obama is also playing footsie with the conservative advocates of "entitlement reform" (their euphemism for cutting benefits). The president wants the corporate establishment's support on many other important matters, and he recently promised to hold a "fiscal responsibility summit" to examine the long-term costs of entitlements. That forum could set the trap for a "bipartisan compromise" that may become difficult for Obama to resist, given the burgeoning deficit. If he resists, he will be denounced as an old-fashioned free-spending liberal. The advocates are urging both parties to hold hands and take the leap together, authorizing big benefits cuts in a circuitous way that allows them to dodge the public's blame. In my new book, Come Home, America, I make the point: "When official America talks of 'bipartisan compromise,' it usually means the people are about to get screwed."

--The Nation, Looting Social Security

Fat cats are exploiting this crisis in order to loot Social Security. They resent the fact that Social Security is the government's greatest success story. They covet $billions$ in the Social Security trust fund. They wish to steal your money and re-distribute it among nation's richest one percent who are sure to squirrel your money away offshore in a bank beyond the scrutiny of the government.This is fascism, socialism for the rich elites.

Thanks to Ronald Reagan and the father-son crime syndicate of Bush Sr and Jr, only a rich, evil elite of just one percent of the nation owns more than some 90 percent or more of the rest of us combined. Will the looting of your money for the purposes of welfare for the rich stimulate the economy? NO! As was the case with Bush's bailouts, it will find its way into tax havens offshore, in fact reducing the amount of money in the US. It will hasten the depression by further contracting the amount of money available for spending.

Many pundits and editorial boards still give Mr. Bush credit for trying to "reform" Social Security. In fact, Mr. Bush came to bury Social Security, not to save it. Over time, the Bush plan would have transformed Social Security from a social insurance program into a mutual fund, with nothing except a name in common with the system FDR created.

In addition to misrepresenting his goals, Mr. Bush repeatedly lied about the current system. Oh, I'm sorry - was that a rude thing to say? Still, the fact is that Mr. Bush repeatedly said things that were demonstrably false and that his staff must have known were false. The falsehoods ranged from his claim that Social Security is unfair to African-Americans to his claim that "waiting just one year adds $600 billion to the cost of fixing Social Security."

...

But the campaign for privatization provided an object lesson in how the administration sells its policies: by misrepresenting its goals, lying about the facts and abusing its control of government agencies. These were the same tactics used to sell both tax cuts and the Iraq war.

And there are two reasons to study that lesson. One is to be prepared for whatever comes next on Mr. Bush's agenda. Despite the tough talk about Iran, I don't think he can propose another war - there aren't enough troops to fight the wars we already have. But there's still room for another big domestic initiative, probably tax reform.

--Paul Krugman, Social Security Lessons

The best thing the government could do with the Social Security trust fund is to leave it the fuck alone. Social Security is probably the Federal Government's ONLY success story, hence the envy with which those monies are viewed by venal, greedy, lying fat cats, Republicans and their paid conspirators on K-street and the Heritage Foundation.

The first thing to know is that Social Security is a bad deal for workers today, offering a much lower return than other investments.

Social Security payments are, in theory, made out of that fund. A depression is often called a 'contraction' because the supply of money literally contracts. As a result sales plummet, jobs decline, industries and businesses go belly up. These venal fat cats are just trying to line their pockets before making their final getaway.

And looking to the future, things only get worse. Younger workers are right to question whether Social Security will be able to provide them with promised benefits when they retire. The huge tax hikes required would exact a great cost on our economy, on employment opportunities, and on future generations.

For over 70 years, Social Security has helped to keep millions of elderly Americans from poverty. But the program rests today on unsound footing.

--Heritage Foundation Lies About Social Security

Given the current economic collapse, aren't you glad the Heritage Foundation gang of fat cats failed to get their greedy mitts on your money?

What it really is a government program with a dedicated tax. We take the payroll tax and it’s used to pay benefits to retirees. And 20-plus years ago, the commission led by Alan Greenspan said, you know, we are going to have this problem as the baby boomers reach retirement age. We will have a higher ratio of retirees to workers, and we better get ready for it. Social Security, the payroll tax was increased. There were some other things, a small rise in the retirement age set in motion. So that Social Security would run a surplus, which would be used to accumulate a trust fund, and this would tithe us over, some ways into the aging of the population. And that on its own accounting is working just fine.

I mean, one of the things that we need to know is that the estimates of the day at which the trust fund runs out, just keep on receding further into the future, because the program is doing so well at running surpluses. So, ten years ago, people said it was going to run out in 2029. Now the official estimate is 2042. Realistically, it’s probably going to go well into the second half of the century. Now how does this become a crisis? Well it becomes a crisis by changing the rules. By saying, oh, well, actually, that surplus that we’re running because of the tax increase that was designed to prolong the life of Social Security, that’s not real. Because it’s invested in government bonds which are a perfectly good asset, for anybody else, but not for the Social Security administration. And so, there was a real crisis that people saw in the 1980’s. They dealt with it. The solution worked very well, but because this administration, because the Republican party doesn’t want Social Security to remain, because they have always wanted to get rid of it since Franklin Roosevelt, they have decided to redefine the rules so as to call it a crisis when realistically, we have a huge budget problem, but that has nothing to do with Social Security.

--Paul Krugman on Social Security, the Decline of the Dollar and Healthcare

Why don't we loot the Heritage Foundation's bank account and distribute all that monies among working folk who lost their jobs and careers during the Reagan years?

Why don't we LOOT the billions that have been quickly squirreled away offshore and re-distribute that money among the millions whose lives have been ruined by the export of US industry that was begun under Ronald Reagan?

Why don't we TAKE BACK this government? Why don't we tell Obama to get on board or get the fuck out of the way? Why don't we seize the bank accounts of the GOP leadership that is conspiring to loot your monies even as we write and post?

We don't we wage a real revolution and take this nation back?

As millions of ordinary working people are anxious about their economic security and worried about their retirement years, an impressive armada is lined up to push the idea--Washington's leading think tanks, the prestige media, tax-exempt foundations, skillful propagandists posing as economic experts and a self-righteous billionaire spending his fortune to save the nation from the elderly.

"We have magneto trouble," said John Maynard Keynes at the start of the Great Depression: most of the economic engine was in good shape, but a crucial component, the financial system, wasn't working. He also said this: "We have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand." Both statements are as true now as they were then.

How did this second great colossal muddle arise? In the aftermath of the Great Depression, we redesigned the machine so that we did understand it, well enough at any rate to avoid big disasters. Banks, the piece of the system that malfunctioned so badly in the 1930s, were placed under tight regulation and supported by a strong safety net. Meanwhile, international movements of capital, which played a disruptive role in the 1930s, were also limited. The financial system became a little boring but much safer.

Then things got interesting and dangerous again. Growing international capital flows set the stage for devastating currency crises in the 1990s and for a globalized financial crisis in 2008. The growth of the shadow banking system, without any corresponding extension of regulation, set the stage for latter-day bank runs on a massive scale. These runs involved frantic mouse clicks rather than frantic mobs outside locked bank doors, but they were no less devastating.

What we're going to have to do, clearly, is relearn the lessons our grandfathers were taught by the Great Depression. I won't try to lay out the details of a new regulatory regime, but the basic principle should be clear: anything that has to be rescued during a financial crisis, because it plays an essential role in the financial mechanism, should be regulated when there isn't a crisis so that it doesn't take excessive risks. Since the 1930s commercial banks have been required to have adequate capital, hold reserves of liquid assets that can be quickly converted into cash, and limit the types of investments they make, all in return for federal guarantees when things go wrong. Now that we've seen a wide range of non-bank institutions create what amounts to a banking crisis, comparable regulation has to be extended to a much larger part of the system.

--Paul Krugman, What to Do

Staring into an abyss, we stand on the brink of a new 'Great Depression'. Those who must bear with greed and incompetence, responsibility brining us to this point, now scheme to subvert our only economic success story. As the late Steve Kangas reminded us, retirement before 1935 condemned huge numbers of seniors to starvation in the streets. It was Social security alone that addressed this problem and eliminated it.

Social Security not only provided the American elderly with a pension, some of that spendable income found its way back into the economy and created jobs. In 1966, Lyndon Johnson expanded Social Security and, by doing so, reduced senior poverty from 30 percent to 12 percent. Now --for all the wrong and wrong-headed reasons, an increasingly uninformed and unintelligent right wing covets the monies that have a proven record of success in difficult times. There are two words for these people: crooks and fools!

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McCain Lies About Social Security

Calling 'Social Security' an 'absolute disgrace', John McCain wants to force you to turn over a portion of your hard earned wages and salaries to Wall Street insiders! When Wall Street is crooked and ailing, Dr. John McCain's prescription: 'Just keep on doing whatever makes you sick'. McCain's campaign could not have picked a worse time to invent and exploit a phony crisis. Can you say 'idiot'?

At a time when Wall Street is proven to be sick, crooked, bloated, corrupt, and voracious, McCain proposes to force young workers to trust Wall Street with their money. Meanwhile, Wall Street will be bailed out --at your expense --and no one bothered to ask your opinion! It's the most draconian legislation since George Bush declared himself a dictator and declared the Constitution 'just a goddamned piece of paper!

Like the rest of the GOP, John McCain uses the Orwellian terms 'privatize', 'privately managed accounts', etc to describe what amounts to the dismantling of Social Security --the ONLY government program that works.

McCain calls Social Security 'an absolute disgrace!' It is --in fact --the government's only unqualified success. His plan to force younger workers to trust Wall Street with their savings will be another AIG disaster --but McCain will give workers no choice. It is literally 'your money and your life!'

Would you patronize a doctor if he told you: "just keep on doing whatever it is that makes you sick!" Meanwhile, Dr. John tells you in effect: "let's just keep on sending your money up to Wall Street! They need it more than you do!"

The annual report of the Social Security system's trustees reveals a system in pretty good financial shape. In fact, it would take only modest injections of money to maintain that system's current benefit levels for at least the next 75 years. Other reports, however, appear to portray a system in deep financial trouble. For example, a 2002 Treasury study, described on Tuesday in The New York Times, claims that Social Security and Medicare are $44 trillion in the red. What's the truth?

--New York Times

Social Security is in even better condition than the Times have described. According to the Treasury study --there is NO Social Security crisis.

Here's a hint: while even right-wing politicians insist in public that they want to save Social Security, the ideologues shaping their views are itching for an excuse to dismantle the system. So you have to read alarming reports generated by people who work at ideologically driven institutions -- a list that now, alas, includes the U.S. Treasury -- with great care.

First, two words -- ''and Medicare'' -- make a huge difference. According to the Treasury study, only 16 percent of that $44 trillion shortfall comes from Social Security. Second, the supposed shortfall in both programs comes mainly from projections about the distant future; 62 percent of the combined shortfall comes after 2077. .

--PAUL KRUGMAN, Social Security Scares

What McCain will not tell you is that the source of the 'crisis' is the shortfall caused by Bush's tax cuts --not Social Security. Krugman reminds that Social Security --"unlike the rest of the federal government" --actually runs a surplus! The GOP has always coveted the 'surplus'. The GOP has always schemed to get its mitts on it. The downside of this success is that GOP leeches have fought a war of naked aggression with looted Social Security revenues.

Another problem is Bush's tax cut. It benefits only the very, very wealthy. Unless you are among Bush's 'base', in fact, an elite of just one percent of the nation, you are screwed. The lingering effects of Bush/GOP incompetence will continue to be the source of real problems and real crises. That will continue to be the case until GOP crooks and liars are shown the door, hanged for mass murder, or hauled before the ICC at the Hague.

McCain's record on this issue is full of lies and distortions based on the GOPs disingenuous philosophy of 'laissez faire' --deregulation and weakened consumer protections. McCain calls his proposed theft of Social Security --'reform' and wrote an article in which he praised banking deregulation and promised the same for the health insurance industry. [What has either industry done for you lately?] Is McCain senile or just out of touch?Is he aware that the people of the US are now 'bailing out' the Wall Street fat cats? Nevermind! Just keep on doing whatever makes you sick!

In the meantime, send McCain a message! Bombard his hide out..uh...headquarters. Tell him in all caps:

THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH SOCIAL SECURITY BUT THE GREEDY BASTARDS ON WALL STREET AND IN WASHINGTON!

STOP LYING ABOUT SOCIAL SECURITY!

STOP TRYING TO MANUFACTURE A CRISIS!

STOP DEMAGOGUING THIS ISSUE!

KEEP YOUR MITTS OFF SOCIAL SECURITY!

You might also remind the fuzzy cheeked idiots in your congressman's office that Paul Krugman was right and prophetic when he said that the biggest risk facing Social Security was and remains 'political'. McCain's demoguogery is proof of it. As Krugman asked "Will those who hate the system use scare tactics and fuzzy math to bring it down?" Of course they will! It's the GOP way!

This just in: John McCain says that war critics should be thrown out of the country.

McCain: Throw War Critics Out of the Country!

I suggest we throw McCain out of the country for supporting Bush's capital crime! A parting shot: FUCK YOU, MCCAIN! And FUCK THIS STUPID WAR CRIME!

Published Articles

• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part I, Police States Begin With False Flag Attacks
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part II, A Climate of Fear is Maintained
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part III, In Fascist Dictatorships Telling the truth becomes a crime
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part IV, the state forces an 'existential' choice
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part V, Public Opinion Becomes Irrelevant
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VI, The government places itself above the law
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State: Part VII, The Government Denies 'Due Process of Law'
• Bush's Conspiracy to Create an American Police State Part VIII: Atrocities are justified with lies, myths or propaganda

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