Bits & Pieces #5

Social Security Isn’t the Answer

Mitch McConnell, ® Kentucky was on the tube this weekend, once again plying the big lie. I really don’t see why almost every Republican congressman has to be the punch line of “How do you know when a politician is lying?” There was old Mitch (and he is looking old), babbling about how Social Security was going to bankrupt the country. Yes, his mouth was moving so we knew he was lying.

I don’t get why every clown who can’t find any other way to cut government spending decides that social security needs to be fixed, replaced, cut, adjusted or mauled. Social Security works. It would work a lot better if members of past governments had not criminally looted it to pay for their own blunders or favorite projects. There’s nothing wrong with Social Security that couldn’t be fixed by the U.S. government paying back to it, what it has illegally taken over the years.

An article in the 1.14.11 OP-Ed section of the Times, by some clown named Ramesh Ponnuru, identified as a senior editor at the National Review, again uses Social Security, along with Medicare as the whipping boys for financial reform. This is a steaming load. Social Security doesn’t need help or restructuring and it isn’t the answer to financial reform, mainly because the money in social security doesn’t belong to the government. That money belongs to the taxpayers who have had it taken from their earnings in order to give them a secure retirement.  The fact that former governments have stolen from the Social Security bank is not an indictment of Social Security but of the thieving scum who were members of those governments.

Over a trillion dollars has been stolen from Social Security over the years with no indication of how it will be repaid. If all the money were returned today there would be enough to carry us until at least 2071 without any adjustments. As the Economic Policy Institute has explained, Social Security “is emphatically not the cause of the government’s long-term deficits, since it is prohibited from borrowing and must pay all benefits out of dedicated tax revenues and savings in its trust funds.” It would seem that all but the most mentally challenged could understand this. Of course it’s not that the Republicans don’t understand, it’s that the truth doesn’t fit their agenda and they feel no compunction about lying to reach their goal.

So let’s leave Social Security alone and look to the bloated and unnecessary items of defense spending as a good start to financial reform.

There are some people who just get It

I’ve never done this before but today I am including in the blog a note I got from an old friend, Caesar Passannante whose political beliefs are usually pretty far to the right of mine. I won’t include his prologue but he does list what he sees as the problems we are facing as a nation and for the most part I agree with him.

1.   Stop stealing the people’s money i.e. stop taking Social Security cash assets

2.   Enact real nation-wide tort reform.

3.   Level the playing field between the states so as to permit real competition between our   greedy insurance companies.

4.   Finally enact the bill to protect whistle blowers, blocked by a “hold” in the Senate placed by an “anonymous” Senator.    Who is this criminal and why is he permitted to thwart the will of the people?

5.   Finally enact legislation permitting true public financing of all elections.     As expensive as this might be, it will be infinitely less costly that what is going on now, which is all the lying bastards elected to office spending all their time trying to get re-elected, and, by the way also spending their personal integrity.

6.   Finally enact legislation effectively regulating the actions of lobbyists representing the dreaded Military-Industrial Complex.

7.   Replace our out-dated and cumbersome tax code.    Any tax code that requires an accountant / tax lawyer in order to comply with it is an insult to the nation’s people and an indication of how stupid our elected officials think we are.  Are lawyers and accountants and those civil servants working for the IRS a “special Interest group”? You bet they are.

8.   Give Chuck Schumer a ticket for littering for actually stating that the shooting in Arizona is a call for unity between politicians and the people to examine their “shared values”.    What a liar!!!      What contempt this unspeakable person must have for the American people to even say such a thing!!!!    There ARE no shared values between those in Washington and the general electorate.

9.   All right, its hard to do any real reform in D.C., so lets start small…..Get rid of the filibuster.    It’s an embarrassment and its time is long ago over (if it was ever a genuine tool for governance).

10.   Someone should bring up the fact that Bernie Madoff is serving 150 years for stealing what is actually less than 20 billion dollars.     How come those in charge of running and regulating our financial markets not only permitted the housing / mortgage scam to exist, they actually enabled it.     Fannie Mae. Freddie Mac, the ratings agencies and those politicians supposedly overseeing them should all be in jail.    FOREVER.    Doesn’t anyone see the ironies and absurd inequalities rampant here?

You may agree or disagree but I really think Caesar has something and I hope for all our sakes someone in power pays attention.

Score one for the EPA

The EPA has finally stood up on its hind legs and done what it was formed to do, protect the environment. For only the second time in history they have revoked a permit for a coal company to destroy a mountain and pollute rivers. Arch Coal’s Spruce #1 project was going to slice the mountain tops off over two thousand acres of West Virginia and in the process dump the rubble (they call it spoil) into valleys where, it would pollute the streams that provide clean water to thousands of local residents. Of course Arch Coal doesn’t care about clean water or destroying the environment as long as they, the rich, get richer. Needless to say they are mounting a huge campaign to reverse the decision.

Kim Link, the company spokeswoman, has the unmitigated gall to complain that the EPA is blocking the company from making a $250,000,000 investment in the area with which they will create 250 jobs. REALLY!!! That many jobs?  With 250 million bucks. Their math is as short as their goals. Give me that kind of money and I’ll create four times that many jobs and I’ll create a project that doesn’t pollute the world. The Clean Water Act was passed to block projects exactly like this one but for the eight years of the Bush administration the EPA was hammered by an administration that didn’t care about anything as mundane as drinkable water or  decimated forestry as long as the fat cats got their payday. It’s good to see the present administration standing up to destructive elements of big business and their lobbyists.