Millionaire Tim Walz makes his 90-year old mother feed herself from her Social Security check

 Speech.

 

 

Trump ups the ante with Democrats, proposes eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits paid by senior citizens, which about 40% of them now do, contrary to the original intention of the reforms in 1983

 

 About 40% of people who get Social Security must pay federal income taxes on their benefits.

More.

As originally intended in the 1983 reforms, taxes were designed to affect just 10% of recipients:

By the time the law was first amended in 1993, about 18% of Social Security beneficiaries had some tax liability (compared to about 10% when the law was originally enacted).

Spiking interest payments on the national debt through 2Q2022 threaten to crowd out other current spending on Social Security, Medicare, and National Defense

 Wait until the second half is done. 

This is going to be ugly.

LOL Bill Clinton, you mean like DCCC ads flooding YouTube claiming Republicans will take away your Social Security and Medicare?

 

Clinton: Republicans "Always Find Some New Way To Scare The Living Daylights Out Of Swing Voters About Something"

Seeing this headline html first thing Saturday morning is disorienting

 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/u-s-stock-futures-slip-as-investors-await-fed-chairman-powells-jackson-hole-address-11661508928

Investors await Powell's address?

That was published 24 hours ago, before the Powell speech, and the contents were updated last evening just before 5:00 PM.

But the pain surely ain't in the Fed.

The only pain described in the story is in households, businesses, families, not in the Fed.

Those Fed guys are rich, and get paid very handsomely.

The top 100 employees each made $274k or more in 2020. They are all named, here.

That puts them in the top 2% of all wage earners in the US.

They're the elites.

They experience no pain.

The Federal Reserve System had 23,517 employees in 2021, with a total system operating expense of $5.7353 billion, or about $244k per employee.

They live in a bubble. 

Everybody's just phonin' it in and getting the hell out of Dodge for the weekend. 

Especially Drudge.

 

I'm so old I can remember when Joe Biden first said Republicans were going to take away your Social Security, way back in 1861

 

NAACP President: Forgiving $10k in student loan debt ain't good enough, is a slap in the face to the average black who owes $53k

From the story:

Canceling $10,000 per borrower would cost around $321 billion and completely forgive the loans of about one-third of student loan borrowers.

This is all BS, of course. Millions of those borrowers can afford to pay off their loans themselves.

Student loans are another form of welfare for far too many borrowers of color, who dig themselves into a deep hole with government and education establishment encouragement and never get a degree, both of which also profit off the scheme. Meanwhile colleges continue to increase the cost of tuition knowing there is a ready source of government loan funding to pay for it.

Forgiving student loan debt without paying attention to income will inevitably be a handout to millions upon millions of high earners like Representative AOC who drives a Tesla Model 3 while reducing the average black loan balance by less than 20%.

Americans with income over $74,000 hold roughly 60% of the total public student loan debt. ... Black Americans are the only race who have student debt higher than their median annual income.

If you make over $74k you are in the top 20% of all wage earners in the United States in 2020. You can afford to pay your obligations. AOC is in the top 4% of all wage earners.

Handing $10k in loan forgiveness to American elites isn't a vote-buying scheme. It's a Democrat patronage payment.

AOC, who makes $175K a year, says taxpayers should have to pay off her $17K in student loan debt

 

 

Compared to the same period last year, the last seven months have seen a huge increase in C19 cases despite the mass vaccination effort, with deaths down only 14%

Year over year Apr-Oct 2021 US COVID-19 cases are up 71% from 9.02m to 15.45m; deaths are down 14% from 226,208 to 193,877.

Are cases up so much because vaccinated people keep spreading it asymptomatically?

 

Why is the white tail deer population in the US so badly infected now when the Chicoms couldn't find any infected animals to blame in the wet market in Wuhan in early 2020?

 

Are the deaths down because of vaccines? Better clinical practices in hospital? Monoclonal antibodies? A less deadly variant? Fewer vulnerable older people?

In California to date, just 10% of the cases have been 65+ years of age, but those account for 71% of the deaths, down from 74% at the beginning of May.

 

The number of people who received retirement benefits from the Social Security Administration rose 900,000 to 46.4 million in March, the smallest year-over-year gain since April 2009. ... the year-over-year change appears to reflect excess deaths. About 447,000 people who died from the virus were 65 or older, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or about 80% of total deaths.

More.

 

 

Mark Levin is so pathetic: He can characterize what went on in America's streets last year as an insurrection when millions rioted . . .

. . . and yet he still insists on the principle of non-violence from the people to put it down. We should just sit there and take it, watch our cities, businesses and homes burn down while the government does NOTHING.

I don't expect normie conservatism EVER to advocate watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants and their mobs.

This is because normie conservatism is really just Republicanism. Its roots do not go back further than Lincoln and his "project" for racial equality, which was in truth nothing but a demagogue's ploy to keep from losing a war. And because of this it has disarmed itself for every other political conflict except for the cause of racial equality. For THAT they will gladly destroy the country and see it destroyed, but otherwise won't lift a finger when BLM and Antifa come knocking.

This is why Republicanism failed to stop the income tax and women's suffrage, Social Security and the welfare state, abortion and gay marriage, and a whole host of other things large and small they said they were against over the years but on which they eventually caved, and then eventually championed. It's the reason "conservatism" has failed, because Republicans aren't conservatives. They are, according to their own lights, simply better versions of Democrats.

For this reason Republicanism can never be about the American Founding, protest to the contrary as it may, boast otherwise as it may. Lincoln destroyed the Founding and redefined the country, by force of arms!, and Republicans are stuck with it, and we with them, unless someone can recover the original spirit of liberty. And Democrats exist to never let them forget it, to make them live by their new principles which only tie their hands and guarantee their ongoing defeat.

Meanwhile, don't look for the Founding spirit from Noon to 3 let alone from 6 to 9. Instead look for more of the same game played by Rush Limbaugh, the "they're the real racists" game.

Race, race, race. Black unemployment was never lower than under Trump.  Hunter Biden said the n-word and the fag-word and gets away with it. Blah, blah, blah, as your kid can't find a decent job to start his own life.

 

Rush Limbaugh today, wrong again: "If you make $55,000 a year you are in the top 10%"

What a shock, right?

He's not even close, per SSA.gov for 2018. You have to make $100k to reach the top 10%. $55k is simply top 30%. $60k puts you in the top 25%. 2019 data comes out in October.

$55k stopped being top 10% in the year 2000. 

If it's a number, Rush will have it wrong.

Slate's Jordan Weissmann is scared of Joe Biden's propensity to flirt with cutting entitlements like Social Security and Medicare

[O]ur ex-VP has talked extensively about his desire to return to an era of bipartisan cooperation. And whether we’re talking about Social Security or another major program, the budget is one area in which those instincts are truly scary.

Read the whole thing here.

Bernie Sanders is going after Joe Biden for wanting to cut Social Security

Yang Gang hates on math as Boomer math because math shows Universal Basic Income is a BFD, not "nothing"

Total cost of federal regulations in 2012 was $2.028 trillion (in 2014 dollars), according to the National Association of Manufacturers.

Federal departmental spending in 2014 was about $1.654 trillion ($3.777 trillion in total outlays minus outlays for Social Security, Medicare and Interest on the debt).

Total = $3.682 trillion for "hundreds of agencies, departments and laws".

Eliminate all that (a GARGANTUAN and variously highly INADVISABLE proposition, you know, like NO defense spending, NO environmental regulation spending, NO food and drug inspection spending, etc.), and you could easily give every man and woman 18 and over in 2014 $2.868 trillion, with money left over: Universal Basic Income of $12,000 a year to 2014's 239.049 million people 18 and over (on average) = $2.868 trillion under Andrew Yang's plan.

Ray Dallio's estimate of $3.8 trillion must include all the kids, too (319 million US population in 2014 x $12,000).

Or are we just going to add the $2.868 trillion to the outlays of $3.777 trillion?

Either way, ain't gonna happen, because this ain't "nothing".

Pie in the sky, bye . . . and bye, commie.

Once upon a time in America conservatives opposed women's suffrage, social security, medicare and the 1994 crime bill, now they are for all those things (and Obamacare)

If 29% of 2016 population 55 and older have absolutely nothing coming in retirement except Social Security, we're talking about 26 million Americans

[Almost] Half of Older Americans Have Nothing in Retirement Savings:

Of those 55 and older, 48 percent had nothing put away in a 401(k)-style defined contribution plan or an individual retirement account, according to a GAO estimate for 2016 that was released Tuesday. That’s an improvement from the 52 percent without retirement money in 2013.

Two in five of such households did have access to a traditional pension, also known as a defined benefit plan. However, 29 percent of older Americans had neither a pension nor any assets in a 401(k) or IRA account.

Senatrix Gillibrand says mere presence of illegals in USA gives them the right to Social Security, etc.

Here.

Feds bust document forgery operation active for more than a decade in "primarily Hispanic town" . . . in Oregon

Feds: Forgery Operation Produced Over 10,000 Fake Documents:

"The fraud ring operated in Woodburn for more than a decade and produced over 10,000 fraudulent documents that they distributed in Woodburn or mailed to customers around the United States," U.S. Attorney Billy Williams and Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter Sax said in the plea agreement posted Tuesday in court documents. Previous detailed court documents remain under seal.

The Fraud Doc Ring communicated with customers using Facebook, email, Snapchat and in person, the plea deal states. Customers emailed, texted or mailed the ring digital passport-style photos for insertion into the fake ID cards, or visited a clandestine photography lab in Woodburn where their photos were taken, the plea agreement says. Customers paid electronically through PayPal, through the mail or in person.

In the apartment, agents found dozens of security images and seals used in legitimate identification documents. They also found stored digital photos of more than 4,000 customers. The Fraud Doc Ring produced a wide array of documents, including drivers' licenses for over 25 different states, Social Security cards, lawful permanent resident cards, U.S. and Mexican birth certificates and marriage licenses.

 

People 55-64 forced out of the labor force since 2000 is up 49.5%, more than any other age demo

In 2018 over 37 million people age 25-64 were not in the labor force.

Not only did they have no jobs, they were not even counted as unemployed because they were not counted as part of the labor force either.

They literally do not count.

Here are the average millions in 2018 by age tranche who are not in the labor force:

25-34:   7.81 million

35-44:   6.95 million

45-54:   7.93 million

55-64: 14.76 million

65+:     41.25 million.

Approximately 32.2 million of these people do not yet qualify for Social Security, including 9.5 million of whom are 55-61.

And if you want to know why young people are living in their parents' basements in their 20s, you have your answer: Business has not hired the young and inexperienced and has fired the old and higher paid.

Nothing personal, right? Just business.

Effing libertarians.

Cry me a shutdown river: Average federal salary was $84,913 in 2017, 76% more than the average W-2 employee at $48,251.57

Office of Personnel Management here, Social Security here.

Bush 41's Americans with Disabilities Act has made the Social Security disability insurance trust fund nearly insolvent because no one ever imagined people would milk it

Contrary to critical analysis, Bush 41 did have a vision thing, it was just a mistaken vision.

He imagined a kinder gentler America full of kinder gentler people, at the expense of a sober estimation of human nature which recognized and reckoned with the baser instincts residing in every human heart.

Conservatives are supposed to specialize in that, but Bush 41 did not.

This mistaken example of liberalism wasn't just a one-off, either. The lack of sobriety extended also to his hate crime legislation.

Bush 41 imagined you could eradicate hate by criminalizing it, as if America ought to become a theocracy with "Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer" becoming the law of the land. But who doesn't kill except out of hate? "Nothing personal, just business" is for the movies, not reality. It's as if long established laws differentiating involuntary manslaughter from murder never existed. Now the damn idea has metastasized into the force which is at the heart of America's perilous polarization, and its insanity. We aren't allowed to hate anything except the haters, while entertaining our hate secretly all the while. Enter cognitive dissonance on a national scale. Everyone knows the truth, they just can't say it.

So they're saying Bush 41 was a patrician as they bury him today. Puritan was more like it.

The Price of the Americans with Disabilities Act:

No one expected that more Americans with disabilities would be dependent on government 25 years later, but that’s what has happened. ...

The ADA made no change to Social Security, yet there has been a substantial increase in the number of people who saw the offered hand described by President Bush bearing a monthly check.

The number of workers who receive Social Security disability-insurance payments has almost tripled. At the end of 2014, 9 million workers had a disability award that entitled them and their dependents to a monthly government check. This was a 197 percent increase over the 1990 number; over the same period the working-age population had increased by only 29 percent.

The disability path out of the labor market has become much more inviting since the ADA became law. More claims point to pain and other conditions whose diagnoses largely rely on patients’ subjective experiences rather than the self-evident disabilities of those who have appeared in coverage of the ADA’s 25th.