Friday, July 8, 2011

Why Social Security Cannot Go Bankrupt

It is a logical impossibility for Social Security to go bankrupt. We can voluntarily choose to suspend or eliminate the program, but it could never fail because it “ran out of money,”says an article in Forbes:

This belief is the result of a common error: conceptualizing Social Security from the micro (individual) rather than the macro (economy-wide) perspective. It’s not a pension fund into which you put your money when you are young and from which you draw when you are old. It’s an immediate transfer from workers today to retirees today. That’s what it has always been and that’s what it has to be–there is no other possible way for it to work.

There appears to be every indication that productivity increases should be sufficient for the Baby Boomers to retire AND allow the rest of us enjoy even higher standards of living (assuming the compression of wages ends). That’s good news. In fact, it’s the only news that’s important./

I’m not telling you whether you should be for or against Social Security, but the argument that it is going bankrupt is a non-starter. It is much ado about nothing.

Read the full article @ Forbes

President Barack Obama used the August 14, 2010 anniversary of Social Security to trumpet Democrats’ support for the popular program and accuse Republicans of trying to destroy it.


President Obama promises to protect Social Security [3:15]
Seventy-five years after President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Social Security into law, Obama said in his August 14, 2010 weekly radio and Internet address: “We have an obligation to keep that promise, to safeguard Social Security for our seniors, people with disabilities and all Americans — today, tomorrow and forever.” [Text of speech]


Sen. Bernie Sanders Cutting Medicare Is NOT the Answer

Some Republican leaders in Congress are “pushing to make privatizing Social Security a key part of their legislative agenda if they win a majority in Congress this fall,” Obama said.

He contended that such privatization was “an ill-conceived idea that would add trillions of dollars to our budget deficit while tying your benefits to the whims of Wall Street traders and the ups and downs of the stock market.”

Democrats adamantly oppose any cut in benefits to reduce costs and some won’t accept a gradual increase in the retirement age, something that was done in the last overhaul in 1983. Republicans say an increase in Social Security taxes is out of the question, even for the wealthy.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

State Budget Cuts Force Texas Town To Lay Off Entire Police Force

Texas is well known for its harsh handling of criminals given Texas has been the most active in carrying out executions, among the states where the death penalty is permitted. But, in one small Texas town the Mayor has warned residents to "Bolt Your Doors" as they are left to defend their own homes against criminals after State budget cuts passed by the 2011 Legislature forced Alto, Texas to lay off its entire police force:

Alto, Texas is preparing for a crime wave, after the small East Texas town put its entire police force on furlough…

In an effort to save money, the city has laid off its police chief and four police officers for six months — longer if Alto’s finances don’t improve.

Alto residents have every reason to fear a rise in crime will follow the police force’s departure. The town’s per-capita crime rate is already above the state average. There were 66 crimes in Alto last year, compared to 51 the previous year.

“Everybody’s talking about ‘bolt your doors, buy a gun,’ ” said Monty Collins, Alto’s mayor, who opposed the City Council vote to furlough police officers.

Kelly Curry, the manager of an off-road-vehicle park, now carries two guns for self-defense. “The thought that we could be 35 or 40 minutes from getting the sheriff’s deputy here, depending on where they are in the county, is scary,” she says.

To close a historic $27 billion budget deficit, Gov. Rick Perry (R) and the Republican-controlled legislature have made draconian cuts to state services and have passed the buck to city governments across the state to make impossible decisions about which essential expenditures to cut. Alto, for instances, faces a $185,000 budget deficit.

The Wall Street Journal notes that the closure of small-town police forces “is part of a broader consolidation of services in communities across the U.S.” It’s a problem because like fire departments and other essential services, “keeping the peace is rarely a revenue-making operation.”

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

15-Year-Old Girl Faces Life in Prison for a Miscarriage

Alternet: Why Conservatives Are Criminalizing Pregnant Women - Rennie Gibbs is accused of murder, but the crime she is alleged to have committed does not sound like an ordinary killing. Yet she faces life in prison in Mississippi over the death of her unborn child.

Sunday, July 3, 2011

Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4 1776

The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.