Thanks, New York Times, for compromising away seniors’ Social Security income

For many American senior 

citizens, this could be the

big meal of the day, if the New

York Times and the Trump

Administration have their way.

I should have come across this sooner. Perhaps it was the Ghost of Christmas Past, trying to postpone my un-holiday-like outrage for a while, that caused me to overlook it.

I refer to a piece by the Times Editorial Board offering to bargain away part of the Social Security benefits that seniors currently receive. 

The Times began by pretending to oppose benefits cuts that Republicans are proposing to “save” Social Security. Never mind that the whole shebang can be saved for the foreseeable future simply by raising the cap on deductions.

The cap — the point at which the government stops deducting Social Security taxes from your pay check — is currently at $110,000 a year. And even the Times article agrees that “the wage cap has not kept pace with the income gains of high earners; if it had, it would be about $250,000 a year.

So just restore the wage kept to its inflation-adjusted level and everybody’s happy. Well, maybe the million-bucks-a-year corporate C-Suite inhabitant gets irked because it takes a few months longer before the withholding from his pay check is reduced. But nearly everybody lives happily ever after, right?

Not the New York Times. 

The Times instead generously offers to chip away at the already cheesy safety net, helping to lower the bar for Tom Price, the incoming head of Health and Human Services, to propose the benefit cuts he has in mind.

States the Times:

A prudent approach to reform would target the causes of the system’s shortfall with a mix of modest benefit cuts and modest tax increases. It would make sense, for instance, to trim the benefits of recipients who were high earners during their work lives, because, in general, high earners live longer than low earners and thus draw their relatively higher benefits for a longer period of time.

Price, admits the Times, “ has been a champion of cuts to all three of the nation’s large social programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. When discussing reforms to Social Security, he has ignored ways to bring new revenue into the system while emphasizing possible benefit cuts through means-testing, private accounts and raising the retirement age.”

There is no reason why America’s citizens — even the richest of us — should accept any of these cuts, nor the one the Times proposes. Social Security isn’t simply a program for the hard up. It’s an insurance program, a retirement annuity, into which every American who has ever worked for a living — and the companies that employed them — paid  regularly by payroll deduction.

Imagine if you had a private retirement annuity and the insurance company came to you and said, “Hey, we’ve decided that, despite what the contract we signed with you says, that we’re going to delay three years before beginning to pay you the money we owe you.”

Or imagine they came to you and said, “Hey, we've just decided that you’ve got plenty of money. So we think you don’t need the benefits you paid for. Thanks, we’ll keep ‘em instead.”

Or even, “You’ve still got some money. Only a dollar? Well, cat food’s plenty nutritious. And if that doesn’t fill you up, eat the cat.”

You’d be enraged. You’d be livid. Your head would be exploding. You’d demand the arrest, prosecution, and imprisonment of the crooks who perpetrated that ripoff. 

So start getting livid now, not only at The New York Times, but also at the mere notion of raising the retirement age again — it was 65 only a few years ago — or reducing benefits. Evidently both are on every Republican agenda, starting the millisecond Trump stumbles into the Oval Office.

As for privatization, that’s just an opportunity for the wonderful folks who brought you the Mortgage Meltdown to reach into your pocket and grab a big handful of your money for themselves.

It’s time to make an issue of this. Not a little issue. A huge, cage-rattling, booming issue. 

Seniors, sharpen your pitch forks and light your torches!

Cross-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog

Chris Christie promises to kill your Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and disability benefits. And Trevor Noah lets him get away with it.

Kiss it goodbye: If Chris Christie (or

any Republican) becomes the next 

President, this is what you can do to

your Social Security and Medicare

Oh Jon Stewart, I miss you already. 

On Wednesday night of this week Christie, he of George Washington Bridge traffic jam fame, appeared on Trevor Noah’s version of the Daily Show for what turned out to be a softball interview. No, make that a powder puff interview.

It was the kind of interview that would have caused Stewart to wade into Christie’s traffic- jammed George Washington Bridge and jump off, had he turned in Noah's performance.

Early on, Noah applauded Christie on camera. Which may have been why Christie felt at home enough to declare….

“My plan is to increase the retirement age for a couple of years….and then also for people who make a lot of money in retiremet. People who make $2000,000 or more a year in retirement, they don’t need Social Security check. They’re fine.”

Except for one small thing that Trevor Noah failed to point out. Social Security isn’t a gift. It’s an insurance policy that every working American bought and paid for, whether they get zero dollars a week or a million dollars a week from other sources in retirement.

If you bought an insurance annuity from, say Met Life, and when you came to collect they said, “Nope, you’re fine, so we’re not paying what we owe you,” you’d have a right to be plenty irate. You’d have an equal right to rage if the company that insures your car refused to pay up after a crash because you can afford a new car on your own. You'd call the insurance company a bunch of crooks, for doing the same crooked think Chris Christie says he'll do.

And since Medicare and disability insurance were also on Christie’s list, it’s a pretty sure bet that if your surgery and hospital stay cost $250,000, Christie would tell you, “You’re fine. Just sell your house.” 

Americans would find themselves in the situation that happens now when elderly people need to go to nursing homes. They have to spend down the assets they and their spouses are living on first, and then go on Medicaid. That’s a process that sometimes leaves a surviving spouse penniless as well. 

Christie wants to “reform” Medicaid too, God help the poor.

Anticipating what might be the next question from an alert interviewer, Christie added, 

“The other alternative if course is to bring more money into the government. But here’s the thing. Why would we trust the government? They’ve already lied to us and stolen the trust fund for Social Security. That’s why we’ve got a problem….”

Noah finally seemed to regain partial consciousness. “Who is the government? Are you?” he asked.

“No no no,” Christie shot back. As if, as governor of New Jersey, he had nothing to do with government. And as if, as President of the United States, he’d also have nothing to do with government. (Speak of lying to us!)  He’d just, uh, cut taxes for the rich so they wouldn’t have to pay more into Social Security.

And who knows? Christie might “adjust” his numbers. Maybe, if you make only $25,000 in retirement, Christie might eventually decide you’re “fine,” especially if that would further help him cut taxes for the rich. Maybe if you have fifty grand in the bank Christie would tell you you’re fine, and come back when you’re broke and we’ll give you Social Security.

The whole disgusting performance — by both Christie and Noah — is viewable here. (Note: to make it even more disgusting, you’ll have to sit through a TV commercial first.)

As for me, it took only three of Trevor Noah’s appearances for me to decide I’m going back to the evening news during The Daily Show time slot. 

Mr. Noah, I watched Jon Stewart regularly. And you’re no Jon Stewart.

Obama does it!

At long last, President Obama has demonstrated that not dealing with impossible Republicans is better than trying to “go halfway” with them.

So cranky congratulations to the President. But congratulations with a caveat. For a few weeks, at least, the once-greatest nation on earth has its borrowing powers and its shaky government operations restored. That’s hardly enough. But it’s an excellent example of what works when dealing with these right wing creeps, and what doesn’t.

We’ve been seeing, since the beginning of the Obama administration, that it’s fruitless to attempt real negotiations with far right Republicans – and also with so-called “moderate” Republicans whose position is anything but moderate when they’re in the thrall of the Tea Party crazies. Exhibit A, of course, has been John Boehner.

Step halfway in compromise toward Republicans and they instantly step the same distance back back. Approach them again, and once again they step back. Calling them 'The Party Of No" or saying that "they can't take 'yes' for an answer," have become new political cliches.

That’s because thee object of the Right is not to settle, but either to have things their way or to sink the whole nation with a loss of cash, credit and credibility. (Not that it wouldn’t sink anyway, albeit more slowly, if the Tea Party actually had its way.)

If the Tea Party and other Republicans were Al Qaeda operatives atempting the exact same thing, we’d looking to to arrest or terminate them. Since it’s Republican lawmakers, we offer them the courtesy of not either smart bombing them or packing them off to Guantanamo Bay.

President Obama has promised to negotiate a “grand bargain,” and there are fears part of that might mean cuts, however gradual, in Social Security and Medicare, when in fact, increases are needed for both. The so-called “chained CPI” is one example. It would effectively tax the oldest and most vulnerable Americans, by using a way of measuring inflation that would actually reduce their benefits, even as the price of medicines, rent and food (among other things) rises.

The Social Security problem could be solved for about the next 75 years, simply by removing the cap on Social Security Taxes, currently $113,000. If your heart bleeds for people who are making, say $250,000 a year and will be forced to pay a few hundred bucks extra for the good of the nation, then bleed. Every other civilized Western nation takes care of its people without a qualm.

The question is, will the President sell the oldest, weakest and sickest down the river to appear “reasonable,” (and save some millionaires a bit of what for them is chump change) or will he continue to use the one technique he finally tried that works against Republicans and continue hanging tough?

Your move, Mr. President.

They're called "entitlements" because you're entitled to them. You paid for them. Don't let Republicans rip them off.

                                                                                                 

Whether you have a job or you're self-employed, every day you work, and every day you have worked, the government has deducted part of your pay for Social Security and Medicare.

That's as it should be. If you get something of value, specifically Social Security and Medicare, you should pay for it.

Now most of the Republicans are demanding that in exchange for some kind of tax increase on the very rich, or just for closing tax loopholes, they want cuts in "entitlements." As if you never paid so much as a nickel into them. As if "entitle" doesn't mean you have a legal right to them, just as the dictionary says.

The truth is, even the very rich are entitled to entitlements if they paid into Social Security and Medicare. There should be no means test. There should be no test of any kind. Like an insurance policy or any other kind of contract, if you paid in, you're entitled to take out.

If you paid into an insurance policy every month for twenty, or thirty, or forty or more years, and then the insurance company said it wasn't going to pay you the benefit you're entitled to, you'd be furious. You'd demand action. You'd insist on the arrest of the executives at the insurance company for theft and fraud.

It's the same with Senator McConnell, and Speaker John Boehner, and Congressmen Paul Ryan and the dozens of other Republican entitlements cutters from Michelle Bachmann to Paul Vitter. Notice that they don't seek to cut the budget by cutting the far richer benefits of senators and congressman that are also ripped indirectly out of your pay check. They want to cut your benefits – benefits, it bears repeating, that you're entitled to – and to hell with you if that plunges you into poverty.

Not only did you pay for those entitlements, your boss paid for you in addition. And if you're self employed, you paid twice – both the employer and the employee tax. How dare those self-serving S.O.Bs Republicans in the House and Senate make a grab for your retirement money and your sick money.

Don't let them do it. Stealing from the poor and middle class to keep the rich waist-deep in clover is an outrage and an affront to 98 percent of the citizens of the United States.

The Republicans in Congress and the Senate deserve the number 98. Ninety-eight years to life.

Excuse me, Mr. Romney, but you make half of America want to puke

So now comes word that Mitt Romney has decided that 47 percent of Americans are just a bunch of freeloaders who think we’re “entitled” to healthcare, a modest retirement, maybe even to live.

And after the word leaked out, he wouldn’t take it back. (Not that I’d believe him if he did.)

Mr. Romney, the deductions for Social Security and Medicare from your staggeringly huge paychecks may have been so small in comparison to your earnings that you didn’t notice, sir, but we paid for those entitlements, as did our employers. We paid week after week, year after year, decade after decade. We paid premiums for Social Security. We paid premiums for Medicare. And we have every right in the world to collect what we paid for.

If a con man charges me tens, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for insurance premiums, and then says to me, “Hey, sorry, but you’re a dependent freeloader and you're not entitled to collect on your insurance,” I will call the cops. I will get him sent to jail. He’s a crook. He’s another Bernie Madoff.

So Mr. Romney, when you make it clear that you intend to pull the same stuff if you become president, you’ve also made it clear what you are.

And perhaps “crook” or “another Bernie Madoff” is too mild a characterization.

Beaver bites scoutmaster, turtle attacks human bride, kangaroo busts out of zoo, Romney picks Paul Ryan.

There must be a full moon out somewhere.

In Pennsylvania, a Boy Scout leader set out to swim across the Delaware River and got bitten by a beaver that turned out to be rabid.

In London, a pair of aquarium keepers wearing full wedding regalia and scuba gear decided to get married underwater in a giant fish tank.”Not in my backyard!” was the reaction of a sea turtle, which attacked the bride and her wedding dress.

In Berlin, a kangaroo, evidently assisted by a fox and a wild boar, who dug holes under the fence confining them, busted out. Last heard, the two carnivores were hunting for Bratwusrst while the ‘roo was devouring lawns.

If you missed all this, it may be because, since the weekend, the news media have focused laser-like on the other piece of weird news – Willard Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as a running mate.

Until now, Willard hasn’t seemed to have much of an economic plan, save to “undo Obamacare” — a move that would drive up health care costs while leaving many citizens essentially bereft of the financial means for hospitalization or surgery. They'd simply have to get out of the way and die.

Now Ryan has a “solution” for Medicare, too, not to mention a "fix" for a Social Security system that doesn't need fixing. It involves gutting Medicare and crippling Social Security, while cutting what’s left of the taxes that the rich pay. The loss to the government from cutting the taxes of billionaires would be made up for by slashing the Social Security income and medical care of the old and poor.

This is not likely (I hope) to endear Romney and Ryan to senior citizens and middle-aged folks. Maybe not even to their children, who will have to start paying for their parents’ care, once Social Security and Medicare become nothing more than bad jokes.

Did I mention I think there must be a full moon out?

Well than, how about the latest conspiracy theory that a weather balloon in Antarctica is really a flying saucer?

Who says the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have no demands?

You want demands? I'll give you demands. I've posted them on a blog called No More Mister Niceblog, where they're attract more eyeballs than the eyeballs scanning my own blog. But I encourage you to visit No More Mr. Niceblog and examine the post entitled, "A list of demands for the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators."

Among the topics covered are reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall act, laws preventing commercial banks from operating across state lines (as used to be the case until the 1980s or so) more income tax brackets, with steeper brackets at the top. And even more demandsmore.

More? The demands also deal with Social Security and Medicare, college tuition and college loans, and the need for a constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people, but artificial constructs.

Just go here and scroll down until you can read the damn thing.

Is it time for the Democrats to put up an anti-Obama primary candidate?

It’s time to come right out and say it. Barack Obama hasn’t merely disappointed his base. He has betrayed us.

He has put Social Security and Medicare on the table – to him nothing more than chips than he can exchange for some vague Republican promises to fiddle around with tax revenues.

This will “cause some political pain…” I heard him say on TV this morning. Political pain?

How about real human pain? The pain of hunger among many seniors and disabled kids, just for openers. Not to mention the pain felt by all of us over 65, who cheerfully accepted Social Security and Medicare deductions from our page checks for decade after decade – because we knew the money were putting in would tide us over and take care of us when we were ill in our old age.

And now we're being cheated out of delivery of a promise and a lifetime of contributions. The Republicans are raiding Social Security as if it were an abandoned bag full of money. And Obama says, well okay, my own supporters don’t want you to do this, and you do want to do this, so we’ll compromise. You can do it.

He “compromised” this way at least once before, when he bargained away his once staunchly defended “public option”

I don’t know what Obama thinks he’s doing. I don’t even know if he thinks. Some deep personal flaw leads him to turn on the people who put him in office — perhaps assuming that come the next Presidential election, Democrats will have no one to vote for save Obama anyway. If that's his thinking, he is a terribly flawed president indeed.

It’s time for us to turn on him. We need a prominent and thoroughly gutsy United States Senator, former senator or a civil servant with experience on the highest level to prepare pronto to run against Barack Obama in the presidential primaries.

In my heart of hearts I know that Russ Feingold or Barney Frank or Bernie Sanders couldn’t carry a national election, even though if we had one of them in the White House, we'd have a great president. Which leads me to one simple question:

Hillary, where are you when we need you?

Is the AARP about to betray millions of its own dues-paying senior citizens...again?

When the AARP came out in support of the Medicare Part D "donut hole" a few years ago, it was a sellout from which millions of American seniors suffered higher drug costs that they're still paying today.

Now, from FiredogLake.com comes this communication, which I quote verbatim without further comment. Read it and draw your own conclusions:

It's time to burn your AARP card.

According to news reports this morning, the AARP will drop its opposition to cutting Social Security benefits. The huge organization wants a "seat at the table" to will decide how to void our country's social contract.

What's worse is that AARP will now use its considerable wealth and stature to advance this devastating idea in Congress. The group plans to hold town hall meetings across the country to evangelize this new stance to their millions of members.

Social Security is in grave danger. Tell the AARP that you won't back down to threats against Social Security.

As one of the largest lobbying groups in the country, AARP will likely now focus much of its $1.4 billion on providing cover for members of Congress, the administration and others seeking to cut Social Security.

AARP was instrumental in the passage of George W. Bush's disastrous Medicare Part D plan that diverted millions of dollars to private insurance companies. In the end, AARP ended up with huge profits from the corporate giveaway that passed Congress.

Now that they've decided that Social Security and the millions of seniors that depend on the program are no longer worth their time or money, you can bet that they'll use those same resources against us.

What's insidious is their attempt to paint this move as a good thing to their members, and that the death of the Social Security and Medicare programs are inevitable. Despite countless reports of their stability, AARP is now feeding the public the same lines as Alan Simpson and Obama's Deficit Commission.

Can you add your name to our letter and show your support for protecting Social Security?

The fight to protect Social Security has huge implications for future generations of Americans. Thank you for standing with us as we vehemently oppose any attempts - big or small - to kill these critical programs.

Thanks for all you do,

- Brian

Brian Sonenstein
Organizer, Firedoglake.com

PS: For more information on this story, check out this Firedoglake.com post from Eric Kingson, professor of social work at Syracuse University and former social security advisor to President Obama during the 2008 campaign.

How William and Kate’s wedding could help Tea Party Republicans destroy Social Security

It’s no secret there’s a Republican plot afoot to “recklessly slash funding to the Social Security Administration” in an attempt to jeopardize its ability “to get vital benefits into the hands of seniors and people with disabilities and provide assistance to the public.”

But how can they get away with it when so many disabled and older Americans rely on Social Security for their very survival?

In the past, Republicans created distractions. Gay marriage. Gays in the military. Abortion. Any emotional wedge issue that could get some Americans so fired up that some of us would forget about our bread and butter issues.

Now the Republican Tea-Party fringe is having an opportunity handed to it on a sterling silver platter. On April 29^th, Prince William and Kate Middleton will be getting married, and our fickle press will turn its full attention, or nearly full attention, to England.

According a piece by Nat Ives in Advertising Age, which follows the networks and the broadcast advertising dollars,

• “CBS's expansive plans include Katie Couric anchoring the evening news from London for three nights starting April 27”
• “NBC News has also introduced a free 'Royal Wedding' iPad app with hundreds of photos, more than 40 new and archival news reports, an interactive royal-family tree and a countdown to the wedding.”
• "Extensive coverage by CNN, which was less than a year old at the time of Prince Charles and Diana's wedding,” has already begun
• "'…and there's going to be so much hype, it's going to be wall-to-wall Will and Kate,’ said Brad Adgate, senior VP-research at Horizon Media. 'I could see people buying DVRs just for this or HD TV sets for the occasion.'”

And on and on. It’s a perfect opportunity for mischievous Republican bullies to put millions of Americans on a cat food diet by cutting their Social Security while the rest of us are focused on Kate's gown, which fewer and fewer of us could afford, since the middle class and working poor only get get tax increases while the rich get tax cuts.

The Republicans do their thuggish work best when the nation is distracted. This time, it’s the royals who could be doing the distracting.

He’s against privatizing Social Security. No, uh, he’s for it. Nope, against it. No, for it. Against it. For it. Against it. For it.

If John McCain becomes President of the United States, Social Security is as doomed as the buggy whip industry. His tool will be that old dirty trick “privatization” – a process that will do for Social Security what private insurance has done for medical care in this country.

Here’s the latest horror, from a May 15th posting on The Carpetbagger Report:

Asked about the change, McCain rejected his own campaign’s Social Security policy. “I’m totally in favor of personal savings accounts…. As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it — along the lines that President Bush proposed.”

When reminded that his campaign website says something completely different, McCain said his site would be changed. Two and a half months later, the site remains the same. As a result, McCain and his campaign have taken completely different positions on the issue, with the candidate embracing the same policy pushed by Bush, which Americans rejected overwhelmingly.

Makes you wonder whether Alzheimer’s has already set in.