Link between default and Social Security…

Fact: The Social Security Trust Funds do not hold any ‘funds’; rather, they hold ‘special U.S. government securities’ which the Social Security administration can redeem at their discretion to cover benefit payouts.

Fact: Republicans claim that the Social Security Trust fund is broke.

Fact: Current Social Security payments have been sufficient to meet the payouts of Social Security programs and are projected to ‘run an overall surplus that adds to the fund through the end of 2021’.

Fact (needs confirmation of role of ‘general funds’ attribution of monies borrowed from the Social Security Trusts): A significant portion of non-Social Security tax receipts and monies borrowed from the Social Security Trust Funds are used to cover other government expenditures: defense and intelligence (heavily dependent on private contractors), education (moderately dependent on private contractors), welfare/social programs, and other spending which includes subsidies (agriculture and energy) and research.

Fact: The richest Americans own the majority of stocks.

Extrapolation: Government functions (thus where government monies are spent) which are dependent on private contractors provide the most financial benefit to those contractors and their stockholders. Government spending on research also benefits stockholders of high technology companies. Therefore, the rich benefit greatly from government spending.

Question: If the Social Security Trust Fund did not exist, would the government have curtailed spending which mostly benefits rich Americans?

Extrapolation: Republican want to avoid raising taxes on the rich which will be necessary to redeem government securities held by the Social Security Trust Funds. [Alternate interpretation: the government, having given the rich the opportunity to profit from government spending, now expects them to pay taxes on their profit(s).] Republicans are doing this through campaigns to convince Americans that the Social Security Trust fund is broke (see above) and suggesting that a freeze in the debt ceiling does not inevitable result in a government default. Their claim that a default can be avoided through selective payment of government obligations (see here and here) smells of an attempt to void the securities held by the Social Security Trust Funds. If voided, the Social Security Administration would not be able to redeem them, no additional taxes would be called from and Social Security payments would not be possible.

This is a government version of corporate pension fund raiding. It is illegal and immoral and should be called out as such.

Day 9

So it’s Day 9 of the shutdown because Republicans in Congress aren’t willing to pass a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the government and we are careening towards a potential default in less than 10 days. And now, instead of manning up to vote for an unconditional CR, the Republicans are passing piecemeal bills to address each crisis as they get media spotlighted. This isn’t responsible budgeting, this is impulse buying and it does little to resolve the major budget issue and next to no positive PR for the Republican Party.

King James Bible

I wonder how many American Fundamentalist/Evangelical Christians know that King James of the King James Bible fame (on which Scofield Reference Bible is based) is a “…flaming homosexual.”

Republican Party = Syria, Russia and Vladimir Putin?

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) and Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) were interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN about the Republican strategy on how to manage the debt ceiling fight where both politicians drew unexpected parallels…

Rep. Sean Duffy: “…the President is going to have to negotiate with us [Republicans] just like he wants to negotiate with Syria and Russia to figure out a solution on how to resolve this debt problem…”

Rep. Peter King: “… if he can sit down with Vladimir Putin, he can sit down with John Boehner…”

Since presidents are elected nationally, President Obama represents the interests of the nation; we would hope the equating of the Republican Party with Syria, Russia and Vladimir Putin doesn’t mean the Republican Party does not act in the interest of the American people.

Update: Maybe the Republicans are asking to be treated as a hostile foreign power… They’ve listed a series of demands in exchange for a one year increase of the debt ceiling… the long term strategy of a foreign enemy?

Leadership

I recently ran across a definition for managerial excellence: ‘excellent execution of an excellent strategy.’ It occurred to me that this is a good definition of leadership.

It is too bad our recent presidents have been highly deficient as leaders…

President ‘Heck of a job, Brownie’ Bush:
-poorly executed an abysmal Hurricane Katrina strategy
-neglected to develop much less execute a terrorist defense strategy prior to September 11, 2001
-ineptly executed two inadequate strategies of war for Iraq and Afghanistan

President ‘No drama’ Obama:
-modesty executed an inadequate economic stimulus strategy
-did a reasonable job executing an immoral and, most likely, unconstitutional national/international strategy of electronic surveillance
-has no obvious strategy on how to legislate/govern around the obstacle of an intransigent House of Representatives

The U.S. is a powerful nation with numerable resources and incredible… why can’t we elect leaders who are capable of leading?

Consumer choice

Roseanne Barr brought up a great question during a recent interview with Current TV: Why does real choice only matter when it comes to consumer products? Why don’t we have more competition in our political arena… a greater variety of political parties, ideas and candidates?

Is there a difference…

...between the shady, underground, underhand, secretive illegal activities of licit or illicit organizations and those which occur under the aegis of ‘classified’, secret government memos, secret orders by way of secret federal courts, secret (not fully disclosed laws) and other secret government directives? The federal government (regardless of political party or affiliation) has been operating more like an organized crime syndicate than a democracy.

Maybe it’s time for a Constitutional Amendment for Government Transparency… Ban secret laws and government agencies; require that the text of laws be free of obfuscating language and abbreviations (apparently much government pork barrel spending is cloaked in obscure language and difficult to decipher).