That about sums up the “hair on fire” rhetoric coming out of the WH, Congress, and the Beltway. The “reason” benefits must be cut. Because nobody could have predicted that 78 million Boomers would begin to retire in 2012 and expected to receive SSI benefits.
Did somebody forget to total the number of Americans born between 1946 and 1964? Not exactly. Did somebody forget to calculate how many Boomers would live long enough to collect SSI? Not exactly. Were no financial actuaries around to figure out the shortfall between pay-go SSI taxes and the benefits that would be needed to cover Boomers? Hell, NO! And since 1983 American workers have been pre-paying that shortfall. Which has gotten us to where we are as David Cay Johnston explains:
Which federal program took in more than it spent last year, added $95 billion to its surplus and lifted 20 million Americans of all ages out of poverty?
Why, Social Security, of course, which ended 2011 with a $2.7 trillion surplus.
The bait-and-switch that Obama is trying foist on Americans is no less outrageous than what the banksters wanted to do to those with bank savings accounts in Cyprus. Only those banksters had to back off from stealing from those with small accounts and Obama’s stealing from the poor.
Anyone that doesn’t get that Social Security is solvent isn’t worth talking to.
So, where is that $2.7 trillion?
Not where it was supposed to be. Johnston explains that 1983 SSI deal:
…The extra tax was supposed to pay off the federal debt and then be invested in federal bonds. …
So, how much was the federal debt in 1983?
9/30/82: $1.142 trillion
9/30/83: $1.377 trillion
And the federal debt as of 4/5/2013 is $16.798 trillion. Now $2.7 trillion of that debt is owed to “boomer” Social Security beneficiaries. So, this country not only failed to pay off that 1983 $1 trillion plus federal debt but collected and spent the $2.7 trillion in additional SSI taxes AND “lost” several trillion more dollars. Not “lost” to those that saw it flow to them in tax cuts and military contracts.
Mr. Obama, “boomers” have been SSI savers/lenders and not borrowers/thieves. Common sense is recouping the money from the borrowers/thieves and not from the savers/lenders. “Boomer” bashing isn’t “common sense” even if you’ve been doing it since 1980. Not that “boomer” bashing began in 1980.
having written this pathetic diary.
As Naked Capitalism points out, the tide has turned:
In January 2008, I wrote:
Booman’s reply:
It is time for Booman to admit how badly he was wrong. To quote Naked Capitalism again:
….
Jesus, that is boring.
Back in January 2008 (the primary and general elections were pretty much decided after the Iowa caucuses), Obama was the only DEM candidate that was a question mark. The stripes and spots of Clinton, Biden, Edwards,and Dodd were known. All four fell for the ridiculous Bush/Cheney WMD hoax. Biden and Dodd in their younger years were better men and Democrats than they were in 2008 but had long since slept with banksters. Plus both were about as interesting and exciting as a bowl of mush. Edwards, a totally obvious sleaze, satisfied those Democrats that believed the crap that only a southern DEM could win the WH. Clinton satisfied Democrats that wanted a third Clinton term, mostly because they didn’t have a freaking clue as to what was done to this country during the first two terms, and non-evangelical Christian women that would have voted for Thatcher because she’s a woman.
Kucinich was the only for sure traditional Democrat in the race. A good man. But he isn’t an inspiring speaker. And like a few lefties before him, he doesn’t quite get the line between rationally progressive and loony.
The opening in the 2008 DEM race was the same as it was in 2004. A person that wasn’t bamboozled by an idiot like Bush. However, other than Chicago pols and money, all the other big money funders and party factions had been scooped up by one of the other candidates. The Wall St gangs had been hedging their bets — too sexist to be enamored of Clinton and still open to the GOP coming up with a viable candidate. Team Obama peeled away at all those factions for support — perhaps the earliest and most significant was Hollywood. Black voters were the most loyal to Clinton — sticking with her through NH.
Why it was fair to view Obama as a question mark in 2007-07 was because he was politically immature. His rhetoric often lacked substance and/or a firm grasp of facts and he seemed completely unaware that he could espouse contradictory positions. Some of that was likely the consequence of consulting with a wide range of professionals – including Josef Stiglitz. The DLC vermin undoubtedly commanded a lot of his attention in the last stage of the general election, but that was behind closed doors and not accessible to voters. What set his path in concrete was when he began naming his neo-liberal cabinet and told Howard Dean to get lost, and his rank-and-file supporters clapped and told the DFH that they were too stupid to see Obama’s pragmatic brilliance. Stupid bullies just like the Bushies.
But am somewhat surprised that Kos is as naive today as he was back in 2002 when he was predicting that DEMs would see mid-term electoral gains and Bush really wasn’t going to invade Iraq.
As Naked capitalism noteted out recently:
I had read the Harper’s piece, which is why I knew in 2008 that Obama is a phoney. That piece made it perfectly clear that Obama was anything but “politically immature”.
This is a complex topic — and there probably isn’t a human being that hasn’t said something in one’s life that gives others pause.
Many have pointed out that FDR didn’t run in 1932 as a liberal. So, he too could have been labeled a “phoney.”
Robert Reich likes to tell the story that he predicted the 1987 market crash — and as people award him points for being prescient, he also mentions that he predicted a crash the year before and the year before that, etc. We always forget predictions or assessments that don’t happen or turn out to be incorrect. All I was saying is that the profile of Obama 2007-08 was incomplete and mixed. Don’t give a shit that earlier someone noticed him wearing a different hat on different occasions. It was just words and he hadn’t done much of anything on which a fuller assessment could be made. The choice for Democrats/liberals in 2008 was set-in-concrete X or maybe not X. Plus if the latter were also X, it wasn’t as solidified.
Have to disagree with you wrt to Obama’s political maturity in 2007-08. Cognitively, that’s a late stage development. A. Lincoln and FDR may have been less the right men at the right time and more the right men at the right age — 50-51. Old enough to have had many experiences – personally, educationally, and professionally – and just young enough to grow within a unique position at a troubled time.
One example — FDR begged Frances Perkins to join his cabinet because he knew her and what she stood for and that she would push him to do the right thing. Obama hired party hacks and sycophants. That’s not the profile of a politically mature person.
You know much more about the history of presidencies than I do.
I meant “politically mature” in the sense that Obama knew how to rise very fast politically. Straight to U.S. senator from just holding a state seat, and then the other presidential candidates, including Hillary, didn’t know what hit them.
Other than the Atlantic piece, here is the other thing that made me skeptical about Obama. His rise was so quick that his candidacy seemed to be manufactured to me, not by himself, but by powerful people who wanted a fallback to Hillary, and by the corporate media.
Not all progressives fell for this ruse, so I don’t agree with your suggestion that this was unpredictable, although I don’t know if anyone, including myself, imagined that Obama would be as bad or worse than Bush 2 in many ways. (Evade the problem of indefinite detention of “suspected terrorists” by just assassinating them, with the civilian casualties that entails.)
I also don’t accept the comparison with FDR. FDR was obviously real from the start, simply because he came from the elite (like JFK after him). So he was born to rule: he didn’t have to sell his soul to get into that position. The same cannot be said for Obama.
FWIW, Obama’s rise wasn’t any faster than Clinton’s – a multi-term governor of a poor and corrupt state.
Obama’s campaign team back in 2007-08 had electoral political maturity and would guess that he learned from them (and they in turn had learned a lot from Howard Dean’s efforts 2002-06). Before then Obama’s success may have had more to do with luck than skill or maturity given the opposition he faced.
I don’t think this is quite right:
Sexism is alive and well but not as powerful a negative as racism. The left would have held their noses and voted for Clinton had she been the nominee and absent Obama in the contest, she would have been the nominee.
Obama and Clinton were equally matched on ambition and arrogance (and accomplishments in public office which were practically nil), but the difference was that Obama and his team could more easily connect with younger voters and had more physical stamina.
Ruse or not, am still of the opinion that he offered nothing worse than Clinton and potentially could have been better. Like you, I seriously underestimated the depths of that “worse.” Probably because my mind can’t accept that there is no substantive difference between the two parties on economic and foreign policy issues.
Not sure anyone is born to lead and could the circumstances and childhoods of Lincoln and FDR have been more different? Would either of them have sold their soul to be POTUS? Doubtful but possible. However, neither would have done so unconsciously. Can’t say the same for the Clintons and Obama.
I am not sure if Lincoln was a great president. Certainly Steven Spielberg making a movie about him makes us suspicious of Lincoln. It might well have been better to let the Confederacy go, and let it become another Mexico. If it wasn’t for the South and Texas, the U.S. wouldn’t be that different from Canada or Germany today.
My point was that FDR didn’t need to sell his soul to become POTUS, because he was born to rule, because of the family he came from.
I never saw Hillary as acceptable. For one, I don’t like dynasties, and for another, Hillary comes across to me as an especially grating Lady Macbeth. Indeed, one of the first things that enraged me about the Obama administration is that he chose this “unsexed” woman as his SECSTATE. Despite my reservations, I could vote for Obama, but I could never have voted for Clinton. But this wasn’t because Obama was younger, it was because of Hillary’s hideousness:
But that’s just me.
??? How is Lincoln responsible for a heavily fictionalized movie about him made almost a hundred and fifty years after his death? If not for the phenomenal performance of Daniel Day Lewis, it would hardly have been worth seeing.
Well, except for the millions of people enslaved in those states and that it wouldn’t have ended the conflict. The Confederacy would have moved on to fighting for more territory in which to practice “their way of life.” Had they succeeded or held on long enough, they would have become part of the WWII axis powers.
Why Franklin and not his older half-brother James? Politics wasn’t in his family’s blood:
Bill and Hillary support hideous policies (and Obama has now joined them in that), and that’s why I couldn’t and won’t support her. However, she’s no more ruthless and ambitious than most politicians that want to be POTUS and wouldn’t be at the top of my list of those willing to murder for it.
I guess I was half joking about Lincoln. You’re right, the South would probably would have made more trouble if the U.S. had allowed it to secede. As for the movie, I found it objectionable, because it was an obvious attempt to boost Obama’s penchant for “compromise”. I’m glad Spielberg got snubbed by the Oscars.
“Born to rule” wasn’t a good formulation. What I meant was that he came from the “ruling class”; by no means everyone who belongs to this class goes into politics.
Whew — thanks for clarifying — had me worried.
From what I politely said about Lincoln
Having now seen it twice — I’d attribute most of the problems with the movie to the script. “The Life of Pi” — so glorious in so many ways had the same handicap.
Will have to think a bit more as to what you’ve said about FDR.
Spielberg is my most hated director, so I was just venting. I finally broke down and watched Lincoln (I had avoided it because I had seen it criticized for ignoring the role that the slaves played in their own liberation), and yes, Day-Lewis’ performance was excellent. (I don’t think I’ve seen him in anything else, though.)
I wasn’t going to watch The Life of Pi, but now that you’ve praised it, I will. My favorite was Django Unchained, of course. (I also liked Cosmopolis, which I saw recently and which pretty much got ignored. It’s definitely a Cronenberg film, even though he was brought in to direct and write the script: it portrays today’s finance capitalism as a virtual reality.)
I cheated on Life of Pi by not seeing the 3-D version (makes me too dizzy) which was the reason Ang Lee wanted to make it. So, I might have missed some of what was best about it but it didn’t change the problem with the story-telling. Doubt I would be so complimentary if I hadn’t seen it in a theater.
Nothing to lose in seeing Zero Dark Thirty on a small screen. A perfectly dreadful movie on every level. Worst sin of all, it’s boring.
Argo won’t suffer too much on a small screen. It’s a well crafted movie.
Didn’t see Cosmopolis but a gem I saw that was ignored is Moonrise Kingdom.
I detested Zero Dark Thirty even more than The Hurt Locker. I gave Argo a break after I saw it, just because it isn’t as depraved as Zero Dark Thirty, but now I think it’s just worthless propaganda, too.
I don’t think I’ll watch Moonrise Kingdom. It strikes me as sentimental, judging by IMDB, and people on film forums I go to don’t like it. Also, I’ve never heard of the director. I’m more likely to watch Silver Linings Playbook a second time.
BTW, my second most hated director is Terrence Malick. 😉
Managed to avoid The Hurt Locker. What surprised me most about Zero Dark Thirty wasn’t that it was propaganda but that it was such inept propaganda and bad movie-making — visually boring, boring characters, dull dialogue, heavy reliance on legends because the locations and story were disjointed, and the raid footage would have been more obviously ridiculous if the it were shown lit up.
I’m fine with a bit of rooting for the home team as long as there is also contextual balance. Argo delivered on that. Could have done without the sappy ending, but it didn’t take away anything from the rest of the movie. It’s competent film-making with no flaws that take away from it which seems to be rare these days. Not a great movie; the story was too small for that. But it didn’t fall short of what it could have been as Life of Pi and Lincoln did. Life of Pi saddened me the most because it could have been a masterpiece.
Several of Wes Anderson’s movies were well received, but Moonrise Kingdom is the first one I’ve seen. Sentimental isn’t an adjective I’d use for the movie. Creative and inventive and he didn’t let Bruce Willis and Bill Murray ham up their roles. The two 2012 “Snow White” movies were also visually creative and inventive, but fell down on most other measures.
On the plus side, at least Malick hasn’t made many movies — the only thing I can recall from Days of Heaven was that it was boring and pretentious. I reserve loathing for most Spielberg movies.
All I can say is I better start saving and I hope a lot of others do too, otherwise there is going to be a lot of people living in the streets.
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HC1850