In part one, I made some pretty harsh claims about Social Security – you know how its name implies a sense of “security” then when you reach your golden years you find out that what it really does is leave you penniless on a subsistence check. Then, if you end up not being able to live on your own, the government takes all your assets and throws you in a “home”. If you’re lucky, your relatives might have enough to bury you but if not, tough luck because the government’s pittance to bury paupers is a measly $250 – not even enough for a pine box. I’ll admit, it does sound harsh. But it happens all the time in the land of the free and the home of the brave. How many of you know a relative of have heard of a friend’s relative who had to sell an elderly relative’s house because they had to move to a nursing home? How many people have heard the advice that smart families transfer the assets out of grandma and grandpa’s names so they don’t get taken away before they die penniless and on Title 19? It’s a hell of a deal isn’t it? Bust your ass your entire life to save what you can for retirement and end up having it taken all way from you before you die broke. That’s been the promise of Social “Security” for many low to middle income people in the past.
Of course we’ve got the leg up on grandma and grandpa because we’ve come to realize that Social Security wasn’t intended to be the be all and end all of our retirement savings. That’s what 401ks and IRA and various other investment accounts are all about. That’s all well and good. But take a look at your Social Security outlay on your next check and realize that the 7.5% your employer pays basically doubles the amount you see on your check. Then think about the fact that all of this could be cash in your check if the government wasn’t taking it out to pay someone else’s benefit. Then think about how much farther along you’d be towards saving for retirement if that money – your money – was actually yours to save and invest. Most of us probably would have been able to survive the last bear market in pretty good shape. While you’re at it, think about the fact that right now you are busting your ass to save for retirement in spite of Social “Security” – Social “Security” that might not even be there when you retire. This, in itself, is an admission that Social “Security” is a failure – it impedes your efforts to save for your retirement by transferring your money to someone else.
The solution to this Social Security boondoggle is simple – personal responsibility (what a novel concept!) Give the money back to the people who earned it and trust them to save for their own retirement – something liberals think we’re all too stupid to do. We can’t be trusted with our own money because we’ll piss it away. There a simple solution to this. Make people prove on their tax return (or by some other means if we wise up and eliminate the income tax in favor of a flat tax – fat chance) that they are saving at least the 15% they would have contributed to Social Security. I’m not one to favor big government, but if a little more big brother will give me my hard-earned money back to invest for myself, I can handle it. If some people just can’t bring themselves to save for retirement, have the government take it out of their check and piss it down a rat hole as they do with all of our money now. At any rate, it’s your choice. And I’ll bet you any amount of money that most of us could do a better job with our money than the government can. While you’re at it, you might have enough to help your folks out in their old age as was the case before everybody got caught up in the notion that grandma and grandpa’s well-being in their golden years was the government’s problem.
This leaves the question of what to do with the old folks we’ve sold up the river with this scam. Have a phase out of the payroll deduct and the benefit so that Social Security in it’s current form goes away as current recipients die off. We don’t need it. It doesn’t work. Phase it out and get rid of it.
When it comes to the creeping rot of Socialism, it’s a viscous cycle. People who don’t have their own money to save and invest for their old age because the government is taking it from them under the guise of helping them probably don’t have the money to save for medical expenses either. That’s okay, we’ve got another big, wasteful nanny-state solution to the problem – Medicare.
Medicare, that second-biggest Socialist boondoggle, now costs the taxpayers $250 billion a year, up from $109 billion a year just 14 years ago which was some $100 billion more than it was actually projected to cost in 1990 when it was conceived in the early 60s. Incidentally, Medicare is now projected to go bankrupt in 2019 if we don’t do something now (read, raise taxes or reduce benefits or both) and to top it all off, we’re about to add another $60 billion or more to it with the recent prescription drug boondoggle. Medicare is just a small part of the overall third-party-payer system of health care we have in this country that’s helped drive health care costs through the roof. In fact, you can trace the beginning of the true explosion in health care costs back to the mid-60’s when the government began paying health care expenses for the elderly and the supposedly indigent through Medicare and Medicaid. Couple that with the widespread belief that it’s up to someone else to provide our health care (typically employer with the help of a health insurance policy – admittedly with some of the premium paid by the employee) and any semblance of a free-market system for health care has flown completely out the window. After all, if you’re not paying for it, what does it matter how much it costs?
This whole deal has come back to bite us in the ass because now we have health insurance companies jacking up insurance rates to us to help them pay for huge increases in medical expenses brought about, in part, by the fact that people don’t care how much the insurance company pays because at lest they’re not paying. (A patently false and shortsighted belief.) In the middle of this whole mess you have Medicare, where retirees still have to pay thousands of dollars a year for insurance to cover what Medicare doesn’t pay AND a premium taken out of their Social “Security” check every month to pay for Medicare. We’ve managed to mess up the entire health care system pretty badly through the notion that that has blossomed since the days of FDR that we shouldn’t have to be responsible for paying our own medical expenses. Because this backwards notion has been allowed to proliferate and because of the outrageous cost of health care, there is no easy solution to this one. Medical savings accounts are a part of the solution, but not all of it by any means. Anyone who has spent any time at all looking at the failure of socialized medicine around the world knows that socialized medicine – the Kerry campaign’s code words for it are “affordable health care for all” – isn’t the answer either. If it was, we wouldn’t have the absolute best and most advanced health care in the world right here, despite the shortcomings in our funding of it. (And you commies out there don’t bother trying to tell me that the best health care in the world exists in Cuba) We also wouldn’t have rich people from foreign countries with socialized medicine flocking here for health care when the private pay health care system in their country isn’t up to the task. Yes, just because places like Great Britain and Canada have socialized medicine doesn’t mean they don’t have private health care. The well-paid doctors treat the rich and the poor doctors work for the inferior public systems the government has so benevolently established for the “peasants”. (Much like “affordable health care for all” would end up being here.)
These, the two biggest social programs are shining examples of the failures of this great country’s experiments with socialism: “From each according to his ability to each according to his need” just doesn’t work. This country didn’t grow into the most successful civilization in the history of the planet in just over 200 years by redistributing wealth, but politicians these days – on the right as well as the left – don’t want to confront the situation and bring about real change. All they want to do is tinker with these two failed experiments in socialism, keeping them on life support for a few more years when what we really need to do is admit that the patients are both brain dead, pull the plug and start over. The left doesn’t want to do this because they are intent on growing and nurturing their classist nanny-state where the government takes care of us peasants who are too stupid to fend for ourselves. The right doesn’t have the guts to confront the issue either. Why? Because at the mere mention of the smallest of changes in Social “Security”, they know the leftists will demagogue them out of office with the notion that Trent Lott, George Bush, John Ashcroft and Dick Cheney will personally be running from house to house and hospital bed to hospital bed throwing old people out into the gutters and torching their homes. Remember in 2000 when the mention of allowing people to invest 2% of their Social ‘Security” money caused Gore, Daschle, Gephardt and the like to just about blow a gasket? I beleive the mantra was “George W. Bush wants to gamble with YOUR Social Security”.Two percent, for God’s sake! The next time the issue of what to do to keep Social Security and Medicare limping along comes up, we all need to make our voices heard. We need to let the politicians know that we need real reform, not just another Band-Aid solution that robs us of our prosperity while promising only that the Social “Security” trust fund might – might – last another 1.49782 years longer.
But all is not lost in the land of the Great Society. We’ve been making slow but steady progress in reducing the dependence of the slothful on that other set of socialist programs – food stamps and housing assistance, commonly known as welfare. Although we’ve seen reductions in the welfare roles over the past eight or nine years, the government still shamelessly pushes these programs worse the a pushy telemarketer. And the maddening part about these programs is that a little personal responsibility would go a long way to virtually eliminating them altogether, leaving what’s left of them to go to the truly needy.
Take the food stamp program. (Oh, I forgot, it’s now officially a nutrition program. Apparently it’s easier to sell the idea that the nanny state is making sure “low income” kids are being well nourished than it is to sell the idea that the nanny-state is feeding them.) What parent of an elementary school kid hasn’t see the shameless way the schools push food stamps and the school lunch program? As a parent I’ve witnessed it myself. And I’m sure it’s a lot worse in cities than it is in flyover country where I live. At school registration a couple weeks before school starts, they pepper you with questionnaires and flyers telling you to think about what your income is and giving you the guidelines at which you would qualify for free or reduced price lunches. These flyers also inform you that, if you already get food stamps, you’re a shoo-in for free lunches for your kids. Of course they also point out the reverse: if you qualify for free lunches and you don’t get food stamps yet, by golly we can hook you up with food stamps quicker than you can say “I’m hungry.” Whatever happened to the good ole’ PB&J in a paper sack? You can bet that peanut butter costs less than giving away free lunches. If I couldn’t afford to buy my kids hot lunch, that’s the route I would take. But there are a lot of welfare pushers out there paid by our tax dollars to sell these programs. Without the programs, they wouldn’t have a job. And their job is to convince “poor” people that filling out an application and getting a free lunch for your kid is a lot easier in the long term than coming up with creative, low-cost cold lunch ideas. And it doesn’t stop at school. One of the first things many immigrants are taught upon arriving in this country – in their language, not the one we speak here – English – is how to access the welfare system. And just in just in case this isn’t enough instruction on how to get the taxpayers to buy your food for you, you can just go surf the web. (Considering that 48% of the households in this country that are classified as below the poverty line own their homes and 96% of all “poverty stricken” households have a color television or two, there’s probably a fairly good number that have computer and Internet access as well.) The first ten or so hits that pop up when you type “food stamps” into Google offer to show you how to access the food stamp program.
And of course, wherever you’ve got a social program, you’ve got the Democrats there to demagogue any opposition to it. Any suggestion that we modify the food stamp or school lunch programs is met with cries that Republicans want to see children starve. We’re an evil bunch, us conservatives; we drag the aged kicking and screaming out of their homes, burn them down, thrown them out of the hospitals, and for an encore, we run around snatching food out of the mouths of starving children.
Despite my rant about food stamps, we’ve made significant progress in reducing welfare dependency in this country over the past eight or nine years. This is due to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. You know that any act containing the words “personal responsibility” in the title couldn’t have anything to do with Democrats and it didn’t. Welfare reform was a part of the Republican Contract with America. Democrats were forced to go along with it because of its overwhelming popularity. Then, William Jefferson “I did not have sex with that woman” Clinton was basically forced to sign it into law. Of course he didn’t believe in it. But he could use it as a campaign issue – he signed it into law less than three months before the 1996 election – and with the public’s strong support of the elements of the Contract With America, he could ill afford to veto it and hope to win reelection.
It worked. In 1995, we spent $22 billion on the food stamp program and by 2001 we’d reduced that to $17 billion. But it had crept back up to $19 billion in 2002. Presumably, in continued back in the wrong direction in 2003. If GW and the congress don’t have the political will to do something more to reduce welfare spending, we’ll be right back where we started – and worse – in no time. Newt Gingrich attacked the problem (and a whole host of others) head on and for it, his ideas were demagogued to death and he was run out of town on a rail.
Admittedly, the food stamp program is peanuts when you compare it to the rampant, out of control, bankrupt socialist system of Social “Security” and Medicare – along with the massive senior citizen drug “giveaway”. But with the same type of political courage and vision of the Contract with America and the right plan, we can come up with a solution to this broken, socialist system. Not only can we, we have to. Because from each according to his ability to each according to his need is becoming too widely accepted in this country. If we don’t’ get away from this notion that it’s somebody else’s responsibility to take care of me – or my relatives – in our old age, or to feed my family if I don’t have the will to do it, this mentality will be so entrenched in our society that one day it will be full-blown Socialism in the USA.
Read more!
Saturday, March 27, 2004
Monday, March 22, 2004
The United Socialist States of America
Forbes on Fox had an insightful topic on 3/20/04. Socialism is creeping into the U.S government and the economy and could threaten the stock market! BLOW ME DOWN! GET OUTTA HERE! YOU”VE GOT TO BE KIDDING! SAY IT AIN”T SO! In his lead in to the program, David Asman announced that they would be exploring the radical notion that Socialism is perhaps as big a threat to our country as terrorism.
Welcome to the party Fox News and Forbes – better than 70 years too late.
Socialism HAS been a bigger threat to this country than terrorism ever since the Democrats hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced it in the 30’s. It’s more insidious than terrorism because it’s been allowed to creep up on an American public that been asleep at the wheel. They used deception to sell it to us all those many years ago and by now, most ordinary citizens have gotten used to Socialism in our representative republic – it’s become a part of the political landscape. In fact, hardly anyone is alive these days who can remember when there weren’t some vestiges of Socialism in place in this country. It’s been creeping into our society, unnoticed by most, for the last 70 years. What am I talking about? Well, there’s no better example of this creeping Socialism than the granddaddy of all social programs conceived by the administration of the granddaddy of 20th Century liberalism – FDR. Yes, I’m talking about Social Security – the social program that started it all, where the deception begins with the name and gets worse from there. What we have now is a program that robs people of the ability to use their money to provide for themselves and save for retirement, leaving them virtually penniless in their old age and living in abject poverty on a subsistence check provided by the government that has robbed them of their ability to provide for themselves in old age. Social Insecurity is the hardly original but apt moniker for this largest of government Ponzi schemes.
As with all supposedly well intentioned liberal programs, it started with a wild overstating of the problem to get people to buy into the big-government solution for it that will solve everything. Back in 1935, at the height of the dustbowl and the Great Depression, the idea that big government would rush in to save you wasn’t a tough sell. Couple this with a breathtaking underestimation of the actual costs, and you have the boondoggle we’re stuck with today.
I’ve never been very good at math, a fact that figured very heavily into my decision to switch my major from Hotel and Restaurant Management in college, which required math, to journalism, which required something I could actually do – write. But it doesn’t take a trigonometry major to figure out that when Ida May Fuller – the first recipient of monthly Social Security check -- paid pennies per month in for a couple years and ended up taking $22,000 out in benefits, the math just don’t work. This should have raised a red flag, but apparently no one was paying attention.
Now days, what we pay into Social Security is hardly pennies. – Let’s take the case of Joe Worker Bee as an example. Joe pays $137 a paycheck into Social Security. Although Joe would probably love to get a return upon retirement that’s proportional to what ole’ Ida May got, the truth is that Social Security is projected to go bankrupt about the same time Joe is slated to retire – somewhere in the 2027-2030 range. But the Social Security Administration is making absurd claims to Joe about money they aren’t even sure will be there when he retires. He’s paying $137 a paycheck – and don’t forget his employer is getting dinged for another 7.5%, or an equal amount to Joe that could be going into his check were they not forced to pay it to the government in Joe’s name. So this is about $550 a month. It’s not invested – God forbid that we would allow peasants like Joe to invest even 2% of their Social Security fund as President Bush once proposed – it’s just sitting there. Yet on Joe’s last Social Security statement, it said that, at Joe’s normal retirement age (which keeps getting older and, in Joe’s case is now 68. Pity those of you in your 20’s. At this rate your “retirement” age will be in your late eighties) Joe’s benefit will be $1600 a month. Aside from the fact that $1600 a month might buy Joe a nice cardboard box and a prime spot under the local freeway overpass in 2030 if he’s lucky, it’s better than twice as much as he’s paying in. Considering this money is not being invested, how does that work? Short answer: it doesn’t.
Earlier, I said that the money isn’t invested, it just sits there. That’s not even correct. What actually happens is all the Social Security money goes into the general fund and is used for ongoing expenses. What goes in the Social Security Trust Fund you might ask? An IOU. So everyone who is currently paying into the fund, is paying for the benefits of current recipients. So not only isn’t the $550 a month Joe and his employer are paying into Social Security being invested, the principal isn’t even being saved – it’s wealth that’s being transferred to a whole bunch of other Ida Mays out there. What’s left to pay Joe’s benefits in retirement? That’s right: NOTHING, ZERO, ZIP, NADA. The government is relying on a whole bunch of other busy workers bees to work so their wealth can be transferred from them to Joe. (Which brings to mind the famous socialist phrase “from each according to his ability to each according to his need.”) You see how this doesn’t work?
Now consider this. Joe’s a baby boomer – in on the tail end of those born from 1947-1964. The older of these “boomers” are now reaching retirement age. They born in an era where it was not uncommon for people to have 4,6,8, even in some cases 10, kids – a lot of worker bees to pay into the pot for Ida May and her fellow retirees. Back when Ida May retired, there were something like 39-40 workers paying for the benefits of one retiree. Now it’s down to three workers for every one retiree and will soon be less than that. With the all the people born in the most baby-happy period in our history set to retire over the next 20 years, how is this ratio going to work. Answer: it isn’t. The boomers aren’t being replaced by an equal number of happy worker bees to pay their Social “Security” benefits. The tens of thousands of dollars Joe paid into Social “Security” will be gone, gobbled up by that big socialist machine, the Federal government and Joe will be left with nothing. Joe’s just SOL, broke and living on title 19 (another socialist boondoggle) under a bridge somewhere.
This intricate dissection of the Social “Security” system – the largest and most prolific social Ponzi scheme ever invented by government is only the most egregious example of Socialism in our government. It illustrates perfectly why Socialism – in full or part—never works and always collapses under the weight or it’s own bureaucracy. We have met the socialists and they are us. And, as I said, it ain’t just Social Security. The productivity in real dollars of labor and costs of goods and service drained from our economy due to the socialist programs that have been implemented in this country over the past 70 years far exceeds any economic damage wrought by terrorism. In fact having the government pay people not to produce drains precious government resources that could be used to fight the fight for our lives and freedom – the War on Terror. In addition, it drains the precious resources produced by millions of citizens that would be otherwise poured into the economy to make this country a greater economic power than it already is. Is Socialism a worse threat to this country than terrorism? Hell yes it is to answer the question quite bluntly. It’s a vile, creeping rot that’s been terrorizing our economy for decades and it’s about time we woke up and revolted against it.
Say tuned for the next installment of Socialism in the USA where will run down the whole list of social programs and detail exactly how they rob all of us of our security and prosperity.
Read more!
Welcome to the party Fox News and Forbes – better than 70 years too late.
Socialism HAS been a bigger threat to this country than terrorism ever since the Democrats hero Franklin Delano Roosevelt introduced it in the 30’s. It’s more insidious than terrorism because it’s been allowed to creep up on an American public that been asleep at the wheel. They used deception to sell it to us all those many years ago and by now, most ordinary citizens have gotten used to Socialism in our representative republic – it’s become a part of the political landscape. In fact, hardly anyone is alive these days who can remember when there weren’t some vestiges of Socialism in place in this country. It’s been creeping into our society, unnoticed by most, for the last 70 years. What am I talking about? Well, there’s no better example of this creeping Socialism than the granddaddy of all social programs conceived by the administration of the granddaddy of 20th Century liberalism – FDR. Yes, I’m talking about Social Security – the social program that started it all, where the deception begins with the name and gets worse from there. What we have now is a program that robs people of the ability to use their money to provide for themselves and save for retirement, leaving them virtually penniless in their old age and living in abject poverty on a subsistence check provided by the government that has robbed them of their ability to provide for themselves in old age. Social Insecurity is the hardly original but apt moniker for this largest of government Ponzi schemes.
As with all supposedly well intentioned liberal programs, it started with a wild overstating of the problem to get people to buy into the big-government solution for it that will solve everything. Back in 1935, at the height of the dustbowl and the Great Depression, the idea that big government would rush in to save you wasn’t a tough sell. Couple this with a breathtaking underestimation of the actual costs, and you have the boondoggle we’re stuck with today.
I’ve never been very good at math, a fact that figured very heavily into my decision to switch my major from Hotel and Restaurant Management in college, which required math, to journalism, which required something I could actually do – write. But it doesn’t take a trigonometry major to figure out that when Ida May Fuller – the first recipient of monthly Social Security check -- paid pennies per month in for a couple years and ended up taking $22,000 out in benefits, the math just don’t work. This should have raised a red flag, but apparently no one was paying attention.
Now days, what we pay into Social Security is hardly pennies. – Let’s take the case of Joe Worker Bee as an example. Joe pays $137 a paycheck into Social Security. Although Joe would probably love to get a return upon retirement that’s proportional to what ole’ Ida May got, the truth is that Social Security is projected to go bankrupt about the same time Joe is slated to retire – somewhere in the 2027-2030 range. But the Social Security Administration is making absurd claims to Joe about money they aren’t even sure will be there when he retires. He’s paying $137 a paycheck – and don’t forget his employer is getting dinged for another 7.5%, or an equal amount to Joe that could be going into his check were they not forced to pay it to the government in Joe’s name. So this is about $550 a month. It’s not invested – God forbid that we would allow peasants like Joe to invest even 2% of their Social Security fund as President Bush once proposed – it’s just sitting there. Yet on Joe’s last Social Security statement, it said that, at Joe’s normal retirement age (which keeps getting older and, in Joe’s case is now 68. Pity those of you in your 20’s. At this rate your “retirement” age will be in your late eighties) Joe’s benefit will be $1600 a month. Aside from the fact that $1600 a month might buy Joe a nice cardboard box and a prime spot under the local freeway overpass in 2030 if he’s lucky, it’s better than twice as much as he’s paying in. Considering this money is not being invested, how does that work? Short answer: it doesn’t.
Earlier, I said that the money isn’t invested, it just sits there. That’s not even correct. What actually happens is all the Social Security money goes into the general fund and is used for ongoing expenses. What goes in the Social Security Trust Fund you might ask? An IOU. So everyone who is currently paying into the fund, is paying for the benefits of current recipients. So not only isn’t the $550 a month Joe and his employer are paying into Social Security being invested, the principal isn’t even being saved – it’s wealth that’s being transferred to a whole bunch of other Ida Mays out there. What’s left to pay Joe’s benefits in retirement? That’s right: NOTHING, ZERO, ZIP, NADA. The government is relying on a whole bunch of other busy workers bees to work so their wealth can be transferred from them to Joe. (Which brings to mind the famous socialist phrase “from each according to his ability to each according to his need.”) You see how this doesn’t work?
Now consider this. Joe’s a baby boomer – in on the tail end of those born from 1947-1964. The older of these “boomers” are now reaching retirement age. They born in an era where it was not uncommon for people to have 4,6,8, even in some cases 10, kids – a lot of worker bees to pay into the pot for Ida May and her fellow retirees. Back when Ida May retired, there were something like 39-40 workers paying for the benefits of one retiree. Now it’s down to three workers for every one retiree and will soon be less than that. With the all the people born in the most baby-happy period in our history set to retire over the next 20 years, how is this ratio going to work. Answer: it isn’t. The boomers aren’t being replaced by an equal number of happy worker bees to pay their Social “Security” benefits. The tens of thousands of dollars Joe paid into Social “Security” will be gone, gobbled up by that big socialist machine, the Federal government and Joe will be left with nothing. Joe’s just SOL, broke and living on title 19 (another socialist boondoggle) under a bridge somewhere.
This intricate dissection of the Social “Security” system – the largest and most prolific social Ponzi scheme ever invented by government is only the most egregious example of Socialism in our government. It illustrates perfectly why Socialism – in full or part—never works and always collapses under the weight or it’s own bureaucracy. We have met the socialists and they are us. And, as I said, it ain’t just Social Security. The productivity in real dollars of labor and costs of goods and service drained from our economy due to the socialist programs that have been implemented in this country over the past 70 years far exceeds any economic damage wrought by terrorism. In fact having the government pay people not to produce drains precious government resources that could be used to fight the fight for our lives and freedom – the War on Terror. In addition, it drains the precious resources produced by millions of citizens that would be otherwise poured into the economy to make this country a greater economic power than it already is. Is Socialism a worse threat to this country than terrorism? Hell yes it is to answer the question quite bluntly. It’s a vile, creeping rot that’s been terrorizing our economy for decades and it’s about time we woke up and revolted against it.
Say tuned for the next installment of Socialism in the USA where will run down the whole list of social programs and detail exactly how they rob all of us of our security and prosperity.
Read more!
Sunday, March 14, 2004
Compare and Contrast:
From the video taped purportedly recorded by Al Qaeda;
"We declare our responsibility for what happened in Madrid," according to a government translation of the statement delivered in Arabic. "It is a response to your collaboration with the criminals Bush and his allies."
Posting from MoveOn.org’s Action Forum page:
Title: Liberal Media - try "Killer Bush"!
"So far, America's Andropov - Emperor Bush the 1st, who criminally established this "Mighty Wurlitzer" CIA Mafia media influence and control program, maintains complete iron-fisted military-industrial control over all media in this country. – Written by Phillip Prescott, so-called liberal wiiter from Detroit Michigan."
Phillip, the folks at AlQaeda appreciate your continued support and I’m sure a membership card is on it’s way to you in the mail.
It took me less than ten minutes to come up with this type of scurrilous comment on the web site that wants to get "ordinary people" involved in politics again and there were many more where this came from. I submit to you that with these types of "ordinary people" out there, who needs Al Qaeda? Not only do we have to fight terrorists around the world, we have to fight the liberal dogma of American terrorists from within our own borders.
Read more!
"We declare our responsibility for what happened in Madrid," according to a government translation of the statement delivered in Arabic. "It is a response to your collaboration with the criminals Bush and his allies."
Posting from MoveOn.org’s Action Forum page:
Title: Liberal Media - try "Killer Bush"!
"So far, America's Andropov - Emperor Bush the 1st, who criminally established this "Mighty Wurlitzer" CIA Mafia media influence and control program, maintains complete iron-fisted military-industrial control over all media in this country. – Written by Phillip Prescott, so-called liberal wiiter from Detroit Michigan."
Phillip, the folks at AlQaeda appreciate your continued support and I’m sure a membership card is on it’s way to you in the mail.
It took me less than ten minutes to come up with this type of scurrilous comment on the web site that wants to get "ordinary people" involved in politics again and there were many more where this came from. I submit to you that with these types of "ordinary people" out there, who needs Al Qaeda? Not only do we have to fight terrorists around the world, we have to fight the liberal dogma of American terrorists from within our own borders.
Read more!
The Real Lying Crooks Are at it Again
By now we all know that John F’in Kerry, the "presumptive" Democratic nominee for President has refused to apologize for calling the Bush Administration “the most crooked, lying group I’ve ever seen”. Even his non-apology was a lie:
"I have no intention whatsoever to apologize for my remarks," Kerry said Thursday in front of a group of Democratic senators he just met with. "I think the Republicans need to start talking about the real issues before the country."
This is a quote, but not an exact quote. What he started to say, as all of us who heard it know, is "I think The Ad …" instead of Republicans. A little Freudian slip there that indicates pretty clearly that, despite the denials, Kerry was slinging mud at the Bush Administration. Why? Because the Bush campaign accurately represented Kerry’s record – and his intentions – in a political ad. The ad claimed that John Kerry would raise taxes by nearly a trillion dollars and is based on the premise that $900 billion is what Kerry agreed it would cost for his plan to provide health care to the masses:
Kerry Accepts Thorpe’s $900 Billion Estimate When Asked. SEN. JOHN KERRY: "[I]f you look at $75 billion a year, the president has just passed a tax cut, 54 percent of which went to 1 percent of Americans, which was about $352 billion. … That’s the choice of this race." PBS’ MARGARET WARNER: "But your plan totaled, as scored by an independent authority, $900 billion over ten years." KERRY: "Yes."(PBS’ “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” 7/2/03)
A simple application of logic tells you that, if he refuses to increase the deficit, yet proposes $900 billion in new spending, he'll have to raise taxes. And he says he will -- on people with incomes of over $200,000 a year.
One problem -- the facts are that it can’t be done solely by raising taxes on only people making over $200,000 a year:
Despite His Rhetoric, Kerry Cannot Pay For His Health Care Proposal By Only Raising Taxes On People Making More Than $200,000. If Kerry repealed the Bush tax cuts solely for those making $200,000 or more, it would only result in $250 billion over 10 years. ("Kerry: 'Worst Jobs Record' Since Hoover," The Washington Post, 7/11/03; David Wessel, Op-Ed, "View From The Right: Tax Increases Ahead," The Wall Street Journal, 2/19/04)
So there is a factual basis for the Bush campaign’s claim that Kerry would raise taxes. No lying and no crookedness there.
This is just one of three main FACTS cited in this ad that are researched and backed up on GeorgeWBush.com – no lying, mudslinging or crookedness involved.
Not so for the Kerry campaign and it’s supporters:
You’ll hearing Kerry out there on the stump saying things like this (taken directly from his web site):
George W. Bush has chosen tax cuts for the wealthy and special favors for special interests over our economic future. John Kerry has a plan to rebuild our future, starting with 3 million jobs in his first 500 days – and a plan to ensure that workers can achieve the American Dream in our changing economy.
Anyone one of you middle class folks (myself included) who reaped the benefit of tax bracket changes and received rebate checks for $400 last summer (and smaller ones in previous summers) for each child you have know that the idea that George Bush only cut taxes for the wealthy is a bald-faced lie. Yet you’ll hear this theme throughout the presidential campaign. WHO ARE THE LYING CROOKS???????
Another thing you’ll hear over and over again from the Kerry campaign and the Democrats is that this economic recovery (from the Clinton recession – the fastest growing economy since Reagan was president) is a "jobless recovery" and that George Bush has lost jobs. Aside from the fact that the president is not responsible for creating jobs, but is responsible for setting economic policy that makes job growth possible, this is a lie. The facts, taken from the NewsMax.com web site, are this:
# The 5.6 percent unemployment rate is the lowest in two years and below the average of the 1980s (7.3 percent) and '90s (5.8 percent), and still continues to drop. (A rate, incidentally, that has been considered nearly statistical full employment in some Democratic administrations.)
# The nation's economic output revealed the strongest quarterly growth in 20 years. The data for the fourth quarter of 2003 show that the civilian labor force rose by 333,000, while the number of unemployed in the labor force dropped by 575,000, and the number of so-called discouraged workers is less than .3 percent of the workforce, according to Paul Kersey of the Heritage Foundation.
# Consumer spending grew between 4 percent and 5 percent last year, and real hourly earnings rose 1.5 percent. Real earnings have risen over the last three years.
# Exports doubled to 19 percent in the fourth quarter, compared to less than 9 percent in the third.
# The number of American workers is at an all-time high of 138.5 million, a level never before attained in U.S. history.
# Jobless claims are 10 percent below the average of the last 25 years and still falling.
# Hiring indices are up, even in manufacturing.
# Productivity growth is extremely high.
Obviously, Bush Administration policies are setting up economic conditions that create job growth.
AGAIN, I ASK YOU WHO ARE THE LYING CROOKS???????
And it’s not just the Kerry campaign that is engaging in lying and crookedness. Other Democrats and liberal groups that support Democratic causes engage in worse lying and crookedness than the Kerry campaign. As an example, we’ll use MoveOn.org, a group that is running an ad claiming that George Bush wants to take away overtime pay from people. Problem is it’s a lie.
The new rules would actually raise the salary at which you could consider a lower-paid employee exempt from overtime by $14,000 a year. This means that millions of Americans who now don’t get overtime pay WOULD get overtime pay or a large increase in salary. The rules could result in a reduction of overtime pay for employees in some jobs making more than $65,000 a year, but even this is uncertain and the vast majority of hourly employees make far below $65,000 a year and would therefore be unaffected by any change of this sort. But, if you’ve seen the MoveOn.org ad, it’s clearly designed to scare the crap out of the average worker and lead them to believe that George Bush wants to rob them of their overtime pay. But flat-out bald-faced lies are nothing new to MoveOn.org. The whole premise that their organization is founded on is a lie.
They claim they are just an innocent little organization dedicated to as they say “bring ordinary people back into politics.” They claim that “Because MoveOn.org has only a tiny staff, our basic operating costs are very low.”
MoveOn.org’s operating costs are apparently large enough to fund a nationwide television campaign of lies to smear George W. Bush and a political action committee. And apparently George Soros, a liberal billionaire financier who has stated that he would spend all of his billions to defeat George Bush in the next election, is one of those ordinary people the "tiny staff" at MoveOn.org wants to bring back into politics, according to this, from CNN.com:
In November, billionaire philanthropist George Soros and his business partner, Peter Lewis, pledged a $5 million matching grant -- a dollar for every two raised by MoveOn members -- to create a $15 million advertising campaign to defeat President Bush. National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman George Allen responded with an online petition denouncing Soros.
You may recall that MoveOn.org is the group that ran a proposed television ad on their site that compared Bush to Hitler and then denied they sponsored it.
AGAIN I ASK YOU, WHO ARE THE LYING CROOKS?????
If John Kerry wants to talk about lying crooks, he need look no further than himself and his supporters. Democrats lied and engaged in all sorts of crookedness in 2000 in an attempt to get Al Gore elected and they're starting in on it again this campaign season – only far sooner than they did with Gore. That’s why we’ve got to do a better job of getting out there and telling the truth and not letting them get by with their lies. Or this time they may lie themselves right into the White House. But it doesn’t end with the campaign. They’ll be working overtime (something they claim George Bush wants to steal from American workers) to steal the election as they tried and failed to do in 2000. More on that later.
Read more!
"I have no intention whatsoever to apologize for my remarks," Kerry said Thursday in front of a group of Democratic senators he just met with. "I think the Republicans need to start talking about the real issues before the country."
This is a quote, but not an exact quote. What he started to say, as all of us who heard it know, is "I think The Ad …" instead of Republicans. A little Freudian slip there that indicates pretty clearly that, despite the denials, Kerry was slinging mud at the Bush Administration. Why? Because the Bush campaign accurately represented Kerry’s record – and his intentions – in a political ad. The ad claimed that John Kerry would raise taxes by nearly a trillion dollars and is based on the premise that $900 billion is what Kerry agreed it would cost for his plan to provide health care to the masses:
Kerry Accepts Thorpe’s $900 Billion Estimate When Asked. SEN. JOHN KERRY: "[I]f you look at $75 billion a year, the president has just passed a tax cut, 54 percent of which went to 1 percent of Americans, which was about $352 billion. … That’s the choice of this race." PBS’ MARGARET WARNER: "But your plan totaled, as scored by an independent authority, $900 billion over ten years." KERRY: "Yes."(PBS’ “The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer,” 7/2/03)
A simple application of logic tells you that, if he refuses to increase the deficit, yet proposes $900 billion in new spending, he'll have to raise taxes. And he says he will -- on people with incomes of over $200,000 a year.
One problem -- the facts are that it can’t be done solely by raising taxes on only people making over $200,000 a year:
Despite His Rhetoric, Kerry Cannot Pay For His Health Care Proposal By Only Raising Taxes On People Making More Than $200,000. If Kerry repealed the Bush tax cuts solely for those making $200,000 or more, it would only result in $250 billion over 10 years. ("Kerry: 'Worst Jobs Record' Since Hoover," The Washington Post, 7/11/03; David Wessel, Op-Ed, "View From The Right: Tax Increases Ahead," The Wall Street Journal, 2/19/04)
So there is a factual basis for the Bush campaign’s claim that Kerry would raise taxes. No lying and no crookedness there.
This is just one of three main FACTS cited in this ad that are researched and backed up on GeorgeWBush.com – no lying, mudslinging or crookedness involved.
Not so for the Kerry campaign and it’s supporters:
You’ll hearing Kerry out there on the stump saying things like this (taken directly from his web site):
George W. Bush has chosen tax cuts for the wealthy and special favors for special interests over our economic future. John Kerry has a plan to rebuild our future, starting with 3 million jobs in his first 500 days – and a plan to ensure that workers can achieve the American Dream in our changing economy.
Anyone one of you middle class folks (myself included) who reaped the benefit of tax bracket changes and received rebate checks for $400 last summer (and smaller ones in previous summers) for each child you have know that the idea that George Bush only cut taxes for the wealthy is a bald-faced lie. Yet you’ll hear this theme throughout the presidential campaign. WHO ARE THE LYING CROOKS???????
Another thing you’ll hear over and over again from the Kerry campaign and the Democrats is that this economic recovery (from the Clinton recession – the fastest growing economy since Reagan was president) is a "jobless recovery" and that George Bush has lost jobs. Aside from the fact that the president is not responsible for creating jobs, but is responsible for setting economic policy that makes job growth possible, this is a lie. The facts, taken from the NewsMax.com web site, are this:
# The 5.6 percent unemployment rate is the lowest in two years and below the average of the 1980s (7.3 percent) and '90s (5.8 percent), and still continues to drop. (A rate, incidentally, that has been considered nearly statistical full employment in some Democratic administrations.)
# The nation's economic output revealed the strongest quarterly growth in 20 years. The data for the fourth quarter of 2003 show that the civilian labor force rose by 333,000, while the number of unemployed in the labor force dropped by 575,000, and the number of so-called discouraged workers is less than .3 percent of the workforce, according to Paul Kersey of the Heritage Foundation.
# Consumer spending grew between 4 percent and 5 percent last year, and real hourly earnings rose 1.5 percent. Real earnings have risen over the last three years.
# Exports doubled to 19 percent in the fourth quarter, compared to less than 9 percent in the third.
# The number of American workers is at an all-time high of 138.5 million, a level never before attained in U.S. history.
# Jobless claims are 10 percent below the average of the last 25 years and still falling.
# Hiring indices are up, even in manufacturing.
# Productivity growth is extremely high.
Obviously, Bush Administration policies are setting up economic conditions that create job growth.
AGAIN, I ASK YOU WHO ARE THE LYING CROOKS???????
And it’s not just the Kerry campaign that is engaging in lying and crookedness. Other Democrats and liberal groups that support Democratic causes engage in worse lying and crookedness than the Kerry campaign. As an example, we’ll use MoveOn.org, a group that is running an ad claiming that George Bush wants to take away overtime pay from people. Problem is it’s a lie.
The new rules would actually raise the salary at which you could consider a lower-paid employee exempt from overtime by $14,000 a year. This means that millions of Americans who now don’t get overtime pay WOULD get overtime pay or a large increase in salary. The rules could result in a reduction of overtime pay for employees in some jobs making more than $65,000 a year, but even this is uncertain and the vast majority of hourly employees make far below $65,000 a year and would therefore be unaffected by any change of this sort. But, if you’ve seen the MoveOn.org ad, it’s clearly designed to scare the crap out of the average worker and lead them to believe that George Bush wants to rob them of their overtime pay. But flat-out bald-faced lies are nothing new to MoveOn.org. The whole premise that their organization is founded on is a lie.
They claim they are just an innocent little organization dedicated to as they say “bring ordinary people back into politics.” They claim that “Because MoveOn.org has only a tiny staff, our basic operating costs are very low.”
MoveOn.org’s operating costs are apparently large enough to fund a nationwide television campaign of lies to smear George W. Bush and a political action committee. And apparently George Soros, a liberal billionaire financier who has stated that he would spend all of his billions to defeat George Bush in the next election, is one of those ordinary people the "tiny staff" at MoveOn.org wants to bring back into politics, according to this, from CNN.com:
In November, billionaire philanthropist George Soros and his business partner, Peter Lewis, pledged a $5 million matching grant -- a dollar for every two raised by MoveOn members -- to create a $15 million advertising campaign to defeat President Bush. National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman George Allen responded with an online petition denouncing Soros.
You may recall that MoveOn.org is the group that ran a proposed television ad on their site that compared Bush to Hitler and then denied they sponsored it.
AGAIN I ASK YOU, WHO ARE THE LYING CROOKS?????
If John Kerry wants to talk about lying crooks, he need look no further than himself and his supporters. Democrats lied and engaged in all sorts of crookedness in 2000 in an attempt to get Al Gore elected and they're starting in on it again this campaign season – only far sooner than they did with Gore. That’s why we’ve got to do a better job of getting out there and telling the truth and not letting them get by with their lies. Or this time they may lie themselves right into the White House. But it doesn’t end with the campaign. They’ll be working overtime (something they claim George Bush wants to steal from American workers) to steal the election as they tried and failed to do in 2000. More on that later.
Read more!
Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Stamp Out the Weasels: Vote Bush
The Democrats are on their way to nominating another weaselly loser – John Kerry.
Don’t take my word for it, read the weaselly lies from his own web site:
George W Bush has chosen tax cuts for the wealthy and special favors for the special interests over our economic future. John Kerry’s priority will be middle class families who are working hard to cover the mortgage, pay the high cost of health care, child care and tuition, or just trying to get ahead.
I’m not wealthy, (at least not by my definition) and you’re probably not wealthy either. Apparently, John Forbes Heinz Kerry, who married $500 million, thinks we're wealthy because he thinks only the wealthy got tax cuts.
Also, does Kerry not realize that the reason why all of us middle class (oh, sorry, I forgot -- I'm rich) people he’s supposedly committed to fighting for have to work so hard to get ahead is that our effective tax rate, when every, federal, state and local tax is figured in is better than 40%.
As for the special interests, read this report from Political Money Line Website, www.tray.com which was posted on the Maryland Republican Party website;
As detailed in the AP report, Kerry blocked an effort to rein in the $15 billion Big Dig highway project in Massachusetts and interceded on behalf of insurer American International Group (AIG) so that they could funnel $130 million in excess government payments into private investments. Despite Kerry's claims that special interests haven't influenced him, AIG subsequently paid some of his travel expenses, and AIG executives maxed out donations to his campaign fund. In 2002, AIG gave $30,000 to Kerry's unlimited soft money fund for his presidential run. In addition, other "Big Dig" contractors contributed at least $60,000 in soft money to Kerry's 527 Citizen Soldier PAC.
As Charles Lewis of The Center for Public Integrity said, "The idea that Kerry has not helped or benefited from a specific special interest, which he has said, is utterly absurd." (John Solomon, "Kerry Blocked Law, Drew Cash," The Associated Press, 2/4/04)
And from an AP story in the Modesto Bee on 2/2/04:
Sen. Kerry, who says he hasn't taken a dime of political action committee money for his presidential campaign, in fact ran a tax-exempt political committee that collected nearly a half million dollars directly from companies and labor unions just before those types of donations were outlawed in late 2002, tax records show.
And in the same story, posted on the Modesto Bee web site, Charles Lewis weighs in again on the issue of Kerry and special interests:
They are both in up to their necks with special interest money," said Charles Lewis, head of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington watchdog group that recently published "The Buying of the President 2004," which tracks the sources of political money for the presidential hopefuls.
"This rhetoric has a rather hollow ring to it. It is hypocritical. They are splitting hairs when they say either, 'I don't take lobbyists' money' or 'I don't take from PACs' when both have received millions from special interests anyway," Lewis said.
The first thing John Kerry will do is fight his heart out to bring back the three million jobs that have been lost under George W. Bush. He will fight to restore the jobs lost under Bush in the first 500 days of his administration. Kerry has proposed creating jobs through a new manufacturing jobs credit, by investing in new energy industries, restoring technology, and stopping layoffs in education.
Kerry’s too busy lying his heart out to fight his heart out. Recent statistics on the economy show that there has been a net gain of jobs under Bush – not a loss – and the economy is roaring back a rate not seen for 20 years.
The Democrats mascot used to be a jackass. It ought to be a weasel. We elected one weasel to two terms in the 1990s. We prevented another one from being elected in 2000. We’re just now beginning to reverse the ill effects of being asleep at the wheel in national affairs, national defense and foreign policy while we were mired in the spectacle of the president of the United States soiling an intern’s blue dress (and apparently, the Oval Office bathroom sink) and musing about what the meaning of the word "is" is. Again, the Democrats will nominate a weasel. But its too dangerous a world out there to install a weasel at the helm of this great nation. Help me bring about the extinction of the weasel. Vote Bush in November 2004.
Read more!
Don’t take my word for it, read the weaselly lies from his own web site:
George W Bush has chosen tax cuts for the wealthy and special favors for the special interests over our economic future. John Kerry’s priority will be middle class families who are working hard to cover the mortgage, pay the high cost of health care, child care and tuition, or just trying to get ahead.
I’m not wealthy, (at least not by my definition) and you’re probably not wealthy either. Apparently, John Forbes Heinz Kerry, who married $500 million, thinks we're wealthy because he thinks only the wealthy got tax cuts.
Also, does Kerry not realize that the reason why all of us middle class (oh, sorry, I forgot -- I'm rich) people he’s supposedly committed to fighting for have to work so hard to get ahead is that our effective tax rate, when every, federal, state and local tax is figured in is better than 40%.
As for the special interests, read this report from Political Money Line Website, www.tray.com which was posted on the Maryland Republican Party website;
As detailed in the AP report, Kerry blocked an effort to rein in the $15 billion Big Dig highway project in Massachusetts and interceded on behalf of insurer American International Group (AIG) so that they could funnel $130 million in excess government payments into private investments. Despite Kerry's claims that special interests haven't influenced him, AIG subsequently paid some of his travel expenses, and AIG executives maxed out donations to his campaign fund. In 2002, AIG gave $30,000 to Kerry's unlimited soft money fund for his presidential run. In addition, other "Big Dig" contractors contributed at least $60,000 in soft money to Kerry's 527 Citizen Soldier PAC.
As Charles Lewis of The Center for Public Integrity said, "The idea that Kerry has not helped or benefited from a specific special interest, which he has said, is utterly absurd." (John Solomon, "Kerry Blocked Law, Drew Cash," The Associated Press, 2/4/04)
And from an AP story in the Modesto Bee on 2/2/04:
Sen. Kerry, who says he hasn't taken a dime of political action committee money for his presidential campaign, in fact ran a tax-exempt political committee that collected nearly a half million dollars directly from companies and labor unions just before those types of donations were outlawed in late 2002, tax records show.
And in the same story, posted on the Modesto Bee web site, Charles Lewis weighs in again on the issue of Kerry and special interests:
They are both in up to their necks with special interest money," said Charles Lewis, head of the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington watchdog group that recently published "The Buying of the President 2004," which tracks the sources of political money for the presidential hopefuls.
"This rhetoric has a rather hollow ring to it. It is hypocritical. They are splitting hairs when they say either, 'I don't take lobbyists' money' or 'I don't take from PACs' when both have received millions from special interests anyway," Lewis said.
The first thing John Kerry will do is fight his heart out to bring back the three million jobs that have been lost under George W. Bush. He will fight to restore the jobs lost under Bush in the first 500 days of his administration. Kerry has proposed creating jobs through a new manufacturing jobs credit, by investing in new energy industries, restoring technology, and stopping layoffs in education.
Kerry’s too busy lying his heart out to fight his heart out. Recent statistics on the economy show that there has been a net gain of jobs under Bush – not a loss – and the economy is roaring back a rate not seen for 20 years.
The Democrats mascot used to be a jackass. It ought to be a weasel. We elected one weasel to two terms in the 1990s. We prevented another one from being elected in 2000. We’re just now beginning to reverse the ill effects of being asleep at the wheel in national affairs, national defense and foreign policy while we were mired in the spectacle of the president of the United States soiling an intern’s blue dress (and apparently, the Oval Office bathroom sink) and musing about what the meaning of the word "is" is. Again, the Democrats will nominate a weasel. But its too dangerous a world out there to install a weasel at the helm of this great nation. Help me bring about the extinction of the weasel. Vote Bush in November 2004.
Read more!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
