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Posts Tagged ‘Social Security’

We Must All Stand Fast – No Backpedaling!

by 1389AD ( 156 Comments › )
Filed under Elections 2010, Elections 2012, Free Speech, Health Care, Healthcare, Progressives, Tea Parties at November 8th, 2010 - 2:00 pm

A Backhand to Backpedaling

Posted on Burn the Koran for Freedom 11/06/2010 by Chuck

Reposted here by author’s request.

There is a new and very important attack on the Tea Party.

“Teabaggers are socialists too.” “Teabaggers are anything but libertarian.” Suddenly this is popping up in forum posts all over the internet. I don’t know where the commie-bots get their programming updates, but they sure do get them.

They’re not being stupid. This thing is a calculated strategy. They’re trying to trap us into a hypocrisy that they can then use against us by getting us to renounce unalienable individual rights. They hope we will backpedal rather than send sacred socialist cows like Social Security and Medi-blah to the slaughterhouse. Today a YouTuber admitted it:

“This is a precursor to what will come once the Republicans take over: the Tea Party BACKpedaling and then getting deleted. Enjoy your movement’s fifteen minutes.”

A forced backpedal is what Rachel Maddow tried against Rand Paul regarding elements of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Paul’s answer to her was substantively correct: yes to prohibiting discrimination by government, no to prohibiting discrimination by private business. But he spent several minutes guiltily diluting it with hemming, hawing and diversions, and those moments ended up being the replay clips from that interview. Stating his meaning outright would have deprived the Left of those clips.

If our new Tea Party politicians backpedal, they become mere Republicans, only without being in the in-crowds, and without any friends among the other Republicans. That is how the Tea Party would be either “deleted” from the solution, or assimilated into the problem.

Do you think the Tea Party has a lot of Republican friends? Our YouTuber above claims to be a “right-leaning Independent”.

The going may get tough. The Left is counting on it. They will try to force us into either accepting socialism, or making the most politically incorrect statements imaginable, such as defending anti-black racism or killing an untouchable sacred cow that keeps someone’s mother alive.

Don’t be a vegetarian. Slaughter that cow, roast it, have it for lunch, and save me a piece.

“Yes, I fully support the right of all private business to serve or refuse to serve anyone they choose, for any reason they choose, so long as they commit no force or fraud in implementing their choice. If a black-owned diner doesn’t want to serve me because I’m white, that is their right of “free association”, which is covered under their First Amendment right of peaceable assembly. Let them advertise their standards up front. I want to know if they hate me before I eat what they bring.”

“Yes, I fully support ending the immoral and insolvent Social Security ponzi scheme. Money promised to those who have paid in will still be repaid as promised, but no new promises will be made. The final act of that ponzi scheme will be dissolve itself once those last debts are paid. The market can take over in the meantime as it sees fit – and it will. Social Security is retirement insurance, and capitalists love to sell you every bit of insurance they can.”

“Yes, I fully support ending all forced contributions to the health-care of other people. Your need does not give you the right to rob me any more than my need gives me the right to rob you. Coverage already promised to specific people will be given AS promised, but no new promises will be made. The market can take over in the meantime as it sees fit – and it will. Medical professionals go into medicine precisely because they want to heal people, as opposed to all the other equally-paying things they have the brains to do. Keep them honest by keeping them accountable to the market.”

We must stand up for our unalienable rights even when the going gets tough. The enemies of freedom will do all they can to ensure that it is tough. Defy them. A free people must always defy tyrants. The one we don’t defy is the one who enslaves us.

And if we renounce our unalienable rights even once, we fail to defy. Rights are unalienable or they are not. No middle-ground is possible. So if we agree to any socialist scheme, we agree to all of them.

Which is how we got to The Obama Years.

Of course right now most of the Tea Party is still learning about fundamental principles of freedom, so there will inevitably be ignorant concessions to things that must not be conceded to. So just say “my bad”, and backpedal them.

For the first time in many decades – if not since our Founding – the new trend is toward freedom, toward reclaiming our place as unalienably righted free individual Americans.

Welcome to the revolution. Fight righteously. Make the enemies of freedom compromise to its defenders. Make them compromise time and time again, until none of them are in positions of influence, and all of them are shamed into silence.

I now return you to the fire pit. Koran to ashes, sharia to dust.


Cracks in the Dam

by Iron Fist ( 90 Comments › )
Filed under Politics at March 14th, 2010 - 2:00 pm

This year things have changed. To a large degree, they have changed for all Americans, from the very young (and even unborn) to the very old. What am I talking about? The ponzi scheme know as Social Security is starting to crack. In fact:

This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.

So, how bad is that? Doesn’t Social Security have a massive trust fund that it can tap? Money built up over generations of overpaid payroll taxes? Well, yes, I guess. It depends on what you mean by “trustfund”. What the Social Security Trust Fund has is a collection of IOUs from the Federal Government. It has no surplus funds whatsoever. All the money is dumped into the general fund and spent. What Social Security has is:

But to illustrate the government’s commitment to repaying Social Security, the Treasury Department has been issuing special bonds that earn interest for the retirement program. The bonds are unique because they are actually printed on paper, while other government bonds exist only in electronic form.

They are stored in a three-ring binder, locked in the bottom drawer of a white metal filing cabinet in the Parkersburg offices of Bureau of Public Debt. The agency, which is part of the Treasury Department, opened offices in Parkersburg in the 1950s as part of a plan to locate important government functions away from Washington, D.C., in case of an attack during the Cold War.

One bond is worth a little more than $15.1 billion and another is valued at just under $10.7 billion. In all, the agency has about $2.5 trillion in bonds, all backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. But don’t bother trying to steal them; they’re nonnegotiable, which means they are worthless on the open market.

Did you follow that? The bonds are special. So special that they are worthless on the open market. So where will the money come from if (when) Social Security needs it? Nobody knows, and that is a real problem. There is nothing real behind the Social Security bonds. They are the promises of a spendthrift Congress to repay them out of income that it doesn’t have. We can’t even sell these bonds to China, at least not if the Chinese are paying attention to what they are buying.

About $2.5 trillion is owed to Social Security.

Good luck to the politician who reneges on that debt, said Barbara Kennelly, a former Democratic congresswoman from Connecticut who is now president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

“Those bonds are protected by the full faith and credit of the United States of America,” Kennelly said. “They’re as solid as what we owe China and Japan.”

What does this mean? Our debt cannot continue to grow the way it is. Sooner or later it is just going to be unstustainable. No matter what we do, we probably can’t pay it back in real money. What that probably means is inflation on a grand scale, to the point that the debt is managable. China and Japan take a big hit, but thanks to the feckless behavior of the Federal Government (Democrats and Republicans) it also means that Social Security shares in that hit. You may still get your monthly check from SSI, but it will be worth pennies on the dollar to what you paid in. If you are lucky.

Like I said, this year things have changed.

(Quote Source)