Welcome to Bizarro Amerika!

I thought these guys/gals only existed in rhetoric but not actually walking the walk. I thought the T-party got co-opted by the GOP and were used to get elected. You know the ones that hate brown people, gheys and aborted feti(or is it fetuses, fetus') I saw the GOP budget proposal and it was very un T-party like. As usual a bunch of bluster and really no results. I kind of called that when friend of tobacco, Weepin, Cheatin Boehner was trying to pass himself off as a fiscal conservative. I knew it was going to be same old shit but a different asshole.  I lost hope and then saw this speech from Rand Paul. I guess he is like his father and says what he means. I don't agree with all of his beliefs(goes to extreme on some issues) but could get behind this one. Federal Government has become too bloated with employees.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMqcLQzD-aA&feature=player_embedded

Ya know, Nutty...

lilMike's gonna jump through his computer screen and kiss ya for supporting his hero; the self-appointed Libertarian/Teabagger physician opthamologist without a license who supports dismantling Medicare but wants them to keep on paying him since more than half of his patients are Medicare (http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/05/14/rand-paul-cut-spending-but-not-medicare-doctor-payments/tab/print/), and FooFa's probably gonna be right behind lilMike considering Paul's crazy conspiracy theories (Obama got elected because he brainwashed us).




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci3L40EL3Cc

Did not say I agree with all his ideas but any cut to the budget has to include medicare, the military and raise the age of Social Security. He is right anything else is not going to work. His dad is also the only one to have balls to say the wars need to end. They are talking about helping Libya, and  Paul the Elder rightly said it is not feasible and we can't afford to be the worlds police. Let someone else take care of Libya. Half of the middle east and europe have our equipment let them use it to help LIbya.
I totally support the idea of getting rid of some of these bloated departments and sending them back to the states. We have 2 choices go bankrupt or fix the problem. We can not continue to run trillion dollar deficits, that is insane. The new budgets from both sides is sorely lacking any teeth.
Don't worry about Paul the Elder getting elected president Fox news is already putting up lies about him and there is no way that bastion of neo-conism would support Paul. They will point the sheep at some tired old candidate such as Horny Newt, Crazy Cliche Machine Palin, Flip Flop Romney, or Used to not talk crazy talk but now pandering to the crazies Huckabee.

My prediction for 2012, Paul the Elder plays the role of Ralph Nader and Obama keeps the presidency. The hard core T-party/libertarians are feeling like a girl who woke up in a fraternity. They are realizing the GOP was just wooing them for the votes/sex(Newt was stressed out, and when Newty is stressed, hide your women.) and now that they have been elected it is time for them to leave and make the walk of shame. I am seeing some rumblings of scorned T-party members. Most think the GOP budget offering is some twisted joke.  They thought is was more than a one nighter/election.

Before I go on, are you aware the Hon. Sen. Paul accused the President of breaking his toilet? (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/rand-paul-blames-energy-department-for-faulty-toilets-among-other-things/)

Furthermore, before I go on, let's talk about Medicare and Social Security, as well as military retirement/disability. Generic Disclaimer: Be glad this isn't elsewhere, where I understand the stupid word is being bandied about en masse today.

I've worked my entire fucking life. I've paid heavily into the Social Security trust fund and have had ridiculous amounts of money deducted from my paychecks so that I, and those who worked before me could live the remainder of their lifes in peace without (too much) worry about medical care and could live off a small pension. These people fought for our country in three wars. If they couldn't fight, those like Rosie the Riveter, would toil away in manufacturing to ensure the guys fighting had the tools to fight.

Fourty-three years ago, our youth were sent off to the jungles of Southeast Asia to fight an unnecessary and unwinnable war against an ideology our government scorned. Over the next eight years, over fifty thousand of these young men and women were killed, and hundreds of thousands more were permanently scarred - both physically and mentally. To make matters worse, they came home to be greeted not as heroes, but were scorned by the Americans they fought for.

These folks earned the right to live the remainder of their lifes without worrying about medical care and to draw a small pension in order to live. Who in the Hell in Congress, or any legislative body, has the fucking nerve to say these people are suddenly liable to have these benefits taken away? (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/10/AR2011031005280.html) Those brave men who fought an unnecessary war in Vietnam, now approaching retirement age aren't worthy? How about the hundreds of thousands of men and women who fought two unneccessary and unwinnable wars in the Middle East? Those two wars our government borrowed money from to fight - an action that actually created this deficit! They're not worthy?

That is Rep. Paul Ryan, newly enthroned head of the House Budget Committee:



So. There you have it. Our country has a deficit, created by borrowing to fight two wars, an unneeded prescription drug plan pushed through Congress by the pharmaceutical companies, and countless tax breaks through the years for the rich. And the only thing our fucking Republican Congress can come up with to resolve the crisis is the same old shit???


How many fucking times are we going to fall for this???

Here's an idea. Let's try something different. Something that's actually worked before! (http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/schumer-calls-gop-bluff-on-spending-and-deficits.php)




Dammit. I could have put that in a blog.

I actually am mulling over that concept to put in a blog.  I suspect you won't like my conclusions.

It's true, that the budget can't be balanced this decade without cutting current retirees.  But I have not heard any possible plan, including Paul Ryan's, that suggests doing anything like that.

As far as Rand Paul goes.  I think he's the real deal, and won't bend to Mitch McConnell unless he gets real concessions for it.  That is extremely worthwhile to have someone like that in the Senate.

And as far as working your entire life, yeah, you and everyone else.  In fact, since you've been retired for years I doubt you are anywhere near winning "most heavily worked" any time soon.  In the meantime, you are totally blurring veterans benefits and medicare and social security.  By the way, you've not been paying into a "trust fund."  The surplus for each year has gone into general revenues and was spent on ...NPR and such.  Social Security got an iou based on the day, which has arrived this year, that we have to raise general revenue to pay back the program. Not that you have any right to social security or Medicare.  You paid taxes, not premiums.  The SC ruled years ago that we're owed shit for whatever we paid.

It's sad that you're so delusional about where our debt and budget outlook problems lie.  Maybe if Think Progress can be convinced...

Why do these people, continuall­y do this? There's always some "extra" element that blows it out of the water.

"I'm for livable and inflation adjusted wages for American workers.".­.."Yea!"

"If elected, the American people deserve serious answers, inquiries and to see possible prosecutio­ns of those individual­s who brought America financiall­y to it's knees."...­"Yea!"

"If we ALL must share in the sacrifice of bringing our country back to financial stability, then ALL means, NO EXCEPTIONS­."..."Yea!­"

"I will fight convention and do my utmost to insist that campaign finance reform and term limits become reality.".­.."Yea!"

"Every 3rd Thursday of each month, every American will dress up as a Bald Eagle to show their patriotism­."..."Ye..­..What?"

"Christian­ity will be the default religion that is assigned to every American at birth. Wishes to change said religion can only occur once you're 21 and then only after a tribunal has determined that your mental health or an outside radicalize­d influence has not impaired your judgment."­..."uhhhhh­hhhhhhhh."

"The Amazing Race will now be 10 teams, guns and a last man standing."­..."What the He#*!?"”

I know you think he's the real deal. Along with Ryan.


I think a hell of a lot more was borrowed to fight two unnecessary wars than to fund NPR.  ;)


HOLY SHIT!


I'm honored, Sir. Welcome!

where have you been?

Using Howies logic, let's just make medicare/medicaid/social security available only to those citizens who have served in the military.

I'm sorry if my post implied that. My intent was to show that everone contributes and for anyone to take away Ss, medicare, et al to pay for mismanagement of our countries finances is not the way to go.

Let those who put us in this situation make the sacrifices.

Why do the poor and elderly have to attune for the sins of the rich?

Two?   So Afghanistan is not the "war we must win?"

Interesting...

The people who put us in this situation are politicians who decades ago decided it would be a great idea to buy votes with public funds, and deliberately set up programs that pushed the costs into the future instead of paying for themselves.  Because, if we had to pay the full cost of the programs from the beginning, we probably wouldn't have been so enthusiastic to have programs like that.  We want programs in which we think we are getting more in benefits than we're paying out for them in taxes.  But to pull that big of a Madoff-like chicanery off, you have to defer the costs into the future.  In a word, a ponzi scheme.

As John Maynard Keynes said, in the long run we will all be dead, which worked out great for those politicians who set up those programs.  They're dead and and are regarded as heros of the poor and elderly, even though they set up a system that was doomed to collapse and screw the poor and elderly.

So that's why the poor and elderly (and everyone else) will be atoning for those previous sins.  However the "rich" didn't set up our ponzi scheme social safety net, your political heros did.

That's a statement we'll never agree on. I suspect the atonement of the poor and elderly will be at a far greater scale than the "rich". If Social Security is somehow eliminated, say for those Puffy's age, it will most likely be privatized into a "ponzi scheme" with the poor and elderly's finances being manipulated by the rich in the markets.

We see how that went before, huh? How many millions of people have worthless retirement funds now thanks to improper investment of their money by folks?

The problem arises when what the taxes are suppose to be paying for, start jumping ship to other areas.  When the penny starts to get thin, you can't ignore why it's getting thin.  I agree with lilmike, with regards to, that there has to be accountability.

But I'll disagree that SS can't work...it works quite well if it's coffers are left alone.  But it seems neither the Government, nor the potential for private investment, can ensure the stability and safety of the funds.  So perhaps, we need to look at other options down the road, that can negate the human greed equation.

I know, speaking for myself, that the meager (and I mean meager) funds that I receive are keeping me from going to some crippled graveyard somewhere and dying, but that's only possible because what I receive is supplemented by a roommate situation and should they move on...I'm literally fucked.

My doctor and I had a very long and surreal talk and it involved her helping me accept and understand that I'm constantly running in the negative, my body cannot keep up with physical exertion for any period of time anymore.  Hell just going to an outing and riding in my power wheelchair physically drains me.  No one and I mean no one is going to hire me to do 15 minutes worth of work, only to need to take a 20 to 25 minutes break after every 15 minutes.  Hell, just writing this makes my arms rubbery and I broke once already to rest my fingers, but I'm fucking verbose, even on page...jesus christ!

There is a real face behind the argument and very real problem of over extension of funds and I hope it can become resolved without the sacrifice of the poor and elderly in the process.

the ponzi scheme is true in that thats where it started.. but the actual 'fall' of that pyramid was the sept '08 wall street failure.. when that happened, every one including states (and some countries) lost everything..

for SS, the money is there and always has been.. the problem was we've borrowed against it by hoping we'd have the funds somewhere else when the time came to repay those 'loans'.. with the meltdown, everything was lost and right now the only 'account' that has money is SS... but we can't use it to sustain other programs like we have,current recipients and future recipients.. so the idea is to re-vamp SS so we can use it now for other purposes and still pay for current recipients.. and really, fuck the future people.. the pols will be long dead and gone so why do they care..

if anyone seriously wants 'reform' and there really is a SS crisis.. they have to start with current recipients.. anything less is just pandering to get votes and make believe..

(and I don't mean starting with Chuck.. I mean starting with Warren Buffet. He and anyone else of a certain income level, should not get any retirement benefits like SS/Medicare.. and in the case of McCain, and vets of that kind of wealth, they shouldn't get VA benefits either. It doesn't hurt those kinds of people to lose their benefits, even if they 'earned' them.. because they have 17 homes,45 cars and billions in the bank.. but it does hurt Chuck or even Howie to lost their benefits just to keep Buffet and McCain on the gov't teet)

Chuck.I feel a smidgen of your pain.


Yet they want you (and you, and you and even you!) to trust your money with them to invest in a post-apocapytical newly risen stock market. That's cool, but they want to do it (again) under the same rules as before...or in this age of deregulation, even fewer rules! I'm glad that at the ripe young age of 53 I won't be around in forty years to see the millions and millions of poor crowding the non-governmental-funded poor houses, clamboring for a bowl of rice or a sip of water to subsist one more miserable day in pain and suffering.


WTF! (I almost typed BITCH! in there but we don't call names over here) 1. Repeat after me: "There is no Social Security crisis." Now go find a blackboard and write that phrase down 1000 times. As much as they want to convince the lemmings Social Security is at Defcon level 6, it ain't true. If they keep their greedy paws off it it, we'll have thirty or so years to come up with a reasonable fix to ensure solvency for future generations.


Oh. OK. I apologize for my previous outburst. The raging mo liberal in me hates, hates, hates! that any disabled veteran or retiree be denied their pension or disability. As I've stated before, they've worked all their lifes to make our country what it is today and safe today.

Yet, the reasonable mo liberal in me agrees, and has stated numerous times before, these people like Buffet and McCain don't need their Social Security and VA benefits. I cannot fathom Buffet waiting hours in his Medicare-approved Doctor's waiting room to get his prostate checked by a Doctor with WAAAAY TOO BIG HANDS (that's another story  ;)) or see McCain schlep to the local VAOPC to get his Alzheimer's medicine refilled and sit in the lobby nodding his head ever-so-slightly left and right focusing on nothing with his beady eyes for three hours while it is filled.

They don't have to.  Let them make the sacrifice. The Chuck's and Howey's and millions of others out there trying to live day to day on that proverbial cup of rice and sip of water have done enough. We've sacrificed already...just the 3% last year and 3% this year we didn't see in a Social Security COLA is near-devastating in these days of 4% inflation.

Let them, the rich who were never affected by a 4% loss here or there, sacrifice.

ahem... please read again..

if anyone seriously wants 'reform' and (if) there really is a SS crisis

the 'if' was meant for both sections.. ;D



 ;)

I knew what you meant. I'm drugged out. Nappy time!  ;D

I suspect that you really don't know what a ponzi scheme is.

The debt commission came up with a plan to save social security for the next 75 years, using really some minor changes, including raising the age of eligibility of to 69 in 2060.  No one who is old enough to be out of onsies is going to be effected by that let alone Puffy, but still, Pelosi declared that "dead on arrival."  If we are unwilling to make small easy changes while we still have time to make them, we are surely not going to be able to do anything about medicaid and medicare until we hit the Greek borrowing wall.  By then, we'll be a broken country. 

I think SS can work, or at least be fixed.  Other countries, like Sweden, fixed their social security problems,  but I don't know what system could bypass human involvement.Simple changes decades ago would have made SS solvent for the foreseeable future.  If the program had indexed the retirement age to the life span, if Johnson had not stolen the surplus for general revenues, or as Robert Reich suggested, if the surplus had been invested in the stock market (yes even with the crashes of 1978, 2007, & 2008) it would have generated enough surplus that SS would be in the black as far as the eye could see.

But when have the country has their head in the sand and denies there is even a problem... well all we will be able to do is drive that puppy right over the cliff.

I take it you mean the "unified budget". The same thing Nixon used and every president after him until 1986. To say Johnson "stole" the funds is misleading.

First I would like to say I am glad to see "The Rifleman" over here.

I agree with the Pauls stance on the budget. We can not run such a high deficit because the interest alone is killing us and we need to fix it.
The first thing on social security; the video of Paul "the junior" I posted he does not want to get rid of SS he just wants to raise the age which makes sense. If we had SS in 1776 you would qualify at age 40, because few lived to 60. People are living longer. He is not saying if due to injury/illness you can't collect early. He also was for slowly raising the age. He wants to cut the military as well, they maybe crazy but they also make a lot of sense.
I am seeing the arguments because it the wars killed our budget. Yes, I agree with that , and Paul the senior is always preaching isolationism. We need to do something with the budget before it wrecks our country, you can not continually spend more than you take in. That never ever works out. Yeah the Paul clan can be batshit crazy on some things, but I totally dig their ideas on the budget.

So we should raise the SS age to, say....







119?  ;)


We really need our own 789 over here.

I agree with most all of what you said.  It's like that whacko uncle.  He has some moments of clarity that are surreal and then...they're flopping backwards, lighting their fart and you're like, "Jesus man, you just opened my mind, and you're gonna choke out a bung flame, wtf?"

I think 70 is reasonable. I plan on working at that age(if not dead) even if it is part time. That is not unreasonable. My step-father is 63 and the dude travels a ton for his job. He is in Iraq, Columbia, all over the United States. He has a pacemaker and walks 3 miles everyday except when he is in Iraq, then he does his walking in the gym.

It started under Johnson.  Before then, Social Security was off budget.  Basically it's own account.  When SS is running a surplus, bringing in those funds hides the actual deficit.  That's why Johnson wanted those funds.  He wanted to hide the cost of the war. You may not consider that stolen, but that would put any corporate accountant in jail.  It's called, co-mingling funds.  So now, to the tune of about 2.5 trillion dollars, we are going to have to come up with money to pay back to SS from general revenues for several years. 

So once you start that, how do you stop as long as SS runs surpluses?  It covers up the size of the true deficit.

Hopeflully now that SS is pretty much going to be running deficits until about 2037 when it goes bust, we can take it off budget again.  Might as well have honest books before the program starts sputtering.

[/quote]

Right. But that's not what you said. You said:


Without mention of subsequent presidents doing the same thing. Additionally, if the surplus had been "stolen", wouldn't the members of Congress all those years also been culpable? Cuz, ya know, they approved it. Or how about the Commission that recommended Johnson do it?

The Congressional Budget Impoundment and Control Act of 74 fixed this and established the modern system of budget reporting.

As far as this statement:


Over and above the fact that that sounds eerily familiary, I cannot find any historical basis for it. As I said, a Commission recommended that Johnson include the funds.

before we raise the age limit (which I really don't like).. we should really do a 'net worth' limit. Sure, I'm socialistic for wanting to take from millionaires.. ::)  but SS was designed with the idea to take care of people who couldn't take care of themselves in old age.. John Kerry, who is married to the Heinz heir, will be able to care for himself..

so instead of making assembly-line workers work until they are 70.. let's go in a different direction.

Yup.

I think it's fair to say Johnson "stole" those funds.  Where are they now?  They're gone.  The money was spent.  I would also say it's fair to say that's true of all of the following Presidents, although to a lessor degree, since they inherited that fucked up accounting. 

It amazes me that liberals who should be supporting the integrity of these programs seem to have no problem with their funds being stripped down and made off with.  Even with new programs you guys seem to be on board with that.  It's really puzzling.


Include the funds where? 

They might as well bring back the Dixiecrat party for all the good a handful of libertarians will do. By libertarian I mean the true definition, not the tea party. Sometime this year unfortunately, the food prices alone are going to incite riots at the least. Our home's floor is eaten up with termites and the fridge is full of maggots while we decide on a new carpet.