I’m trying to make this an Iowa free day, which given the polls coming out today probably is a good thing:
- ‘Drive to kidnap IDF soldiers up since Schalit deal’ – Hmmmm, trading 1000 for 1 is a motivator. Who whoulda thunk it.
- New York Times Staffers Express ‘Profound Dismay’ With Management – It hurts to see them cry.
- Nauseating moral cowardice of the liberal-left trenderati. Title says it all.
- Payroll Tax Cut Could End Social Security – now that one takes me by surprise.
- Ethnic cleansing in the Arab world – U.N. Resolution to follow, not.
- Obama says not bound by terms of legislation he signs – liberal outrage to follow, not.
- More to follow.
- Sorry to interrupt this Iowa free day, but no one could have seen this coming – Kent Sorenson, Bachmann’s Iowa chair, defects to Paul
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Comments
Ed Morrissey is defending the VA GOP wrt Gingrich/Perry ballot (non-)access.
Social security is a welfare entitlement. And it should be paid from the general revenues, and it should be subject to entitlement rules laid down accordingly. Enough of the fictions of this ponzi scheme.
Wrong Bucko…
Social Security would have been fine IF former democratic administrations had not adversely tampered with its tenants such as LBJ raiding the trust fund to finance the great society and war of poverty, Clinton’s taxation scheme in the 1990’s and now further eroding of the fund by Obama crazy payroll tax roll back.
Further, you need to know the meaning of “ponzi” schemes and how they work.
The only way Social Security would be fine is if everyone died at the age of 65.
By the way; no American pays Social Securtiy to fund their own retirement, they pay to fund someone else’s retirement. So in this way, yes it is a ponzi scheme. The type of Ponzi scheme in which looters receive more than they paid in:
http://investmentwatchblog.com/typical-retired-couples-will-collect-1-million-or-more-in-social-security-and-medicare-this-is-more-than-they-paid-in-and-the-cost-will-fall-on-todays-workers/
“the new recipients will be the typical husband and wife who reach age 66 and qualify for Social Security. Starting next year, this typical couple, receiving the average benefit, will begin collecting a combination of cash and health-care entitlement benefits that will total $1 million over their remaining expected lifetime.
According to my calculations based on government data, such married couples will begin receiving monthly Social Security checks that will, on average, total about $550,000 after inflation. They will receive health-care services paid for by Medicare that, on average, will total another $450,000 after inflation. The benefactors will be a generation of younger workers who are trying to support themselves and their families while paying taxes to finance the rest of government spending.
We cannot even remotely afford to make good on these promised benefits. ”
Thank you, Syn. The trust fund thing is essentially creative accounting, a pretense of setting aside the ponzi scheme from the rest of the inflow and outgo of federal revenues, serving propaganda purposes both for those who think social security is pension-like, as well as for those against entitlements with the implied assurance that somehow it won’t be funded from taxes not earmarked from it.
SS is principally, but not exclusively, a contributory entitlement. It is not strictly a welfare program. It is a ponzi scheme in that the payments are current while the benefits are deferred, but it is also an investment with a promised return. It is the latter where the problem arises. However, the problem is in part due to a distorted market, where everything from commodities to services have been incorrectly and excessively priced due to leverage in both the public and private sectors.
Whereas SS and Medicare are reasonable programs with often unreasonable expectations, Medicaid and other welfare programs are unreasonable programs with often unreasonable expectations. However, with the latter, we, as a society, have determined it is desirable to help individuals who momentarily falter. That assistance should be focused, measured, and goal oriented.
No, it is not a “contributory entitlement”, or “an investment with a promised return”. There is no promised return and there never has been. There is no obligation on the USA to ever give you a cent, even if you live to be 100. Congress could repeal the whole thing tomorrow, and you would have no recourse, because you have no equity, no contract, nothing but a political expectation that Congress won’t have the guts to change anything before your retirement.
But it’s not a Ponzi scheme either; it differs in one vital respect: A Ponzi scheme depends on the pretense that the punters’ money is being invested, and there are returns being earned from which the scheme is making its payouts. Bernie Madoff, who ran a classic Ponzi scheme, went to the extent of providing his punters with statements detailing the transactions he’d supposedly made with their money. Based on these statements, the payouts they received seemed to make sense. But of course there were no investments, there were no transactions, there was no revenue coming in except for the money being fleeced from new punters. SocSec, on the other hand, has never pretended to have a legitimate income. It makes no investments and doesn’t claim to do so. It openly pays each year’s benefits out of the taxes paid in that year. So while it’s like a Ponzi scheme in some important ways, it isn’t really one.
Re: NYT staffers unhappy with their management. Who might they be: Krugman, Douthat, Nicholas Kristoff, David Brooks, M. Dowd? Since I stopped my subscription, I have 20 hits/month. Can’t seem to use them up. It shows how petty and mean I am, but I do want that rag to fold.
Signing statements is a term only used for Republicans. In Obama’s case they become Constitutional / other objections of a prudent legal expert. Funny how that works.
“New York Times Staffers Express ‘Profound Dismay’ With Management – It hurts to see them cry.”
No it doesn’t.
It would be ironic if the most extreme radical leftist to ever hold office were the one who opened the door to fundamentally transform social security…
For some, Mitt still seems the best candidate. They seem to discount (or can’t keep track of) his changing positions.
As in the case of cooking a frog where you turn the heat up slowly, they’ve been lulled by the interval between the flips and the flops to the extent that he doesn’t SEEM so bad. Neither better or worse than any other candidate or politician.
Here’s a link to a list of his positions. With links for verification.
Somehow, “slightly less socialist than Obama” is now acceptable. The GOP has been on this path for a long time but Romney represents a quantum length down the road back to serfdom…
That’s a great list. Thank you for posting it.
I am voting ABO. ABO is my candidate, this is who I am voting for.
I don’t believe in Romney anymore than I believe in Ron Paul but all that matters is that Obama is voted out in 2012
The only thing I want is for Ann Coulter to promise that if Romney wins the nomination he won’t spend the general campaign beating down Conservatives while praising Obama and the Democrats.
At one point, I too thought I would vote ABO.
Problem is that lately I’m having trouble seeing the difference with two particular candidates and possibly three.
How much worse with Obama could we be compared to a Romney presidency?
I’m realizing now that his positions (or what he says which apparently isn’t the same thing) are not conservative and will not revive the country. Having a Republican in office for some crucial SCOTUS appointments seemed the bottom line but now I see he can’t be trusted on those either.
Next would be Ron Paul. Is a racist, bigoted, truther, isolationist and possibly senile candidate going to be much better than what we have? He’ll never get the votes needed for his much vaunted fiscal policies and his foreign policy may just cause such an imbalance in the world that war may result. Israel will be abandoned. Islam will be left to do as it will.
How will that be any better than what Obama has accomplished?
I can only hope that Gingrich can pull this out as otherwise we are doomed. And that’s NOT hyperbole.
You do know, don’t you, that frogs don’t really behave like that? Put a frog in cold water and put it on the fire, and when it gets hot enough the frog will hop out.
Listen, I say listen closely boy.
I’ll even spell it out for ya son.
It’s called a M-E-T-A-P-H-O-R.
Now go, I say go look that up in your Funk & Wagnalls boy!
And remember, I say remember no one likes a smarta$$.
Metaphors get their power from the examples they use. That’s why they exist. And sometimes those examples aren’t true. Like ostriches don’t really bury their heads to hide from predators.
Dr. Ron Paul got a welcome surprise – and rival Michele Bachmann an embarrassing one – when the state chairman of the Bachmann campaign announced Wednesday night that he was throwing his support to Paul. The endorsement came just hours after he had appeared with the Minnesota congresswoman.
Iowa State Sen. Kent Sorenson said he was switching from Bachmann to Paul because the Texas congressman was the most conservative of the top-tier candidates.
“In the last couple of weeks I fell into Ron Paul’s camp,” said Bob Colby, of Newton, who spent 21 years in the military and is a former employee at a now-shuttered Maytag plant in town.
“I threw my hands up” in frustration, said Colby, who added that he supported Romney in the 2008 caucuses and chose Sen. John McCain over Barack Obama that fall.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_GOP_CAMPAIGN?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-12-28-18-26-54
So the Professional Political guy moved from the third-tier candidate to the crazy-crank candidate, big deal.
The best part of a Ron Paul win is that he’ll take both the Truther and Stoner voter away from Obama.
The good news is, if Paul actually manages to win Iowa, that is probably the most persuasive argument for taking away Iowa’s “first in the nation” status.
See, every cloud has a silver lining. =)
A modest recommendation for the category above entitled:
• More to follow.
Via CNN, the Gingrich campaign has now publicly conceded that they were at fault for the failure to make the ballot for the primary in the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Thankfully, I suppose this means that the risible Pearl Harbor analogy is now history, and that the new analogy will instead be to Pogo:
“We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
I think it refreshing when a candidate admits to making a mistake. Now if only Romney would admit he made a mistake with Romneycare. Perhaps you could give us the analogy to use for someone who is in deep denial.
I too think it refreshing when a candidate admits to having made a mistake.
But before quickly attempting to change the subject, let’s first ask this . . . Exactly what was the mistake Newt admitted to?
Was it . . .
• Responding to his failure to make the Virginia ballot by publicly declaring that it was analogous to Pearl Harbor, and doubling down on that ridiculous and insulting assertion, rather than taking the brief time to factually determine what actually happened before going off half-cocked?
No, I don’t think he did admit to that mistake! But a big mistake it was! In fact, I think that mistake would certainly qualify as deep denial.
• Admitting to having failed to turn in a sufficient number of signatures to ensure covering the express requirement for 10,000 valid signatures, given the “roadmap” recommendation to obtain between 15,000 and 20,000 signatures as was expressly laid out for them by the Virginia GOP, coupled with the high likelihood that some significant percentage of signatures would likely, perhaps even inevitably turn out to be invalid, for one reason or another?
No, he did not admit to making that mistake either. No, all he did was concede that someone he hired committed fraud, leaving him and his campaign holding the bag.
Now, I know you and others hope to quickly change the subject by demanding, as you have, that Mitt admit that he made a “mistake” with “RomneyCare.” But he doesn’t believe that he did, and he has offered an explanation for why he takes that position. You choose not to accept that explanation; others do.
But why should he “admit” to a mistake that he does not believe is a mistake . . . just to satisfy your current need for “dueling concessions” to help your favored candidate recover from making an inapt analogy and a glaring campaign oversight, all in one fell swoop?
Hardly!
I think that Ed Morrissey has made a powerful argument that the failure, especially on the part of the Gingrich and Perry (and other campaigns as well) to qualify for the Commonwealth of Virginia primary ballot was indeed a measure of failed competence on their parts.
In other news, Sorenson, who began the season as a St Louis Rams fan, is now a Green Bay Packers fan.
Imagine that: There is no loyalty in politics. Shocking.
The amusing part is that neither one has a shot at winning the nomination or the election. Followed by Santorum, Perry, Gingrich, Huntsman, Smith and Jones. All right, I made up the last two names.
Sorenson no longer a Libra, joins Sagittarians.