A Few Reads for Thursday

The whole reason the far right and billionaires like the Kochs despise Social Security and Medicare and want them gone is because they don't want to pay their share of FICA.  It is really that simple.  The despicable Pete Peterson and equally despicable Cato Institute came up with the bogus "insolvency" in order to create resentment from younger people and to try and undermine faith in the program.

Because SS is a tax, it can't go broke, and any shortfall can be handled through the general fund, as this article makes clear.    Ditto for Medicare.  This is why Congress is in no big rush to handle the "crisis."  As long as the assholes in the GOP don't mess with them, the programs should remain viable forever, or for as long as the planet exists.

Snip:

If Congress does nothing in the mere, uh, 4,000 days it has left to avert calamity, Social Security checks will still go out to beneficiaries nationwide. They’ll just be for less money—specifically, everyone will receive only about 83 percent of their current monthly benefits.

That would be a terrible outcome that Congress absolutely can and should avoid. But it is still a better outcome than Social Security disappearing altogether, which is what half of millennials think is going to happen. If the Social Security trust fund depletes in 11 years, that just means that it will have depleted a nest egg it built up a few decades ago. In that event, Social Security will just pay out every cent that it takes in. Our checks will be for less, but we will still get checks.

My fellow millennials’ misconceptions make sense, however: Our whole lives, we’ve been subjected to Pete Peterson propaganda that depicts our parents as stealing our earnings to fund programs we’ll never enjoy. Journalism’s job is to cut through that noise, not exacerbate it.

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The NFL nitwit Harrison Butker's speech saying women should pursue an Mrs. rather than an MS has gone over like a turd in a punch bowl, to read social media comments.

Sixty years ago, those comments would have been standard.  Somebody like Betty Friedan giving a commencement speech saying young women should be free to pursue their dreams of a career and such would have been totally condemned by the media and much of the public.  How times have drastically changed, thank God.

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I Support This Proposal

 President-elect Joe Biden has some good proposals about reforming Social Security so that people like me won't have to work until we die.

I would like to see the Windfall Elimination Provision repealed.  That is absolutely devastating to people like me who could use the extra $120 month.

Linked is an article about the proposed ideas.  Let's see asshole McConnell try and destroy this sane and humane reform.

Snip:

Biden’s Social Security platform includes key benefit increases. Eligible workers would get a guaranteed minimum benefit equal to at least 125% of the federal poverty level. People who have received benefits for at least 20 years would get a 5% bump. Widows and widowers could receive about 20% more per month. Biden also proposes changing the measurement for annual cost-of-living increases to the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly, or CPI-E, which could more closely track the expenses retirees face. To pay for the changes and extend the program’s solvency, Biden would apply Social Security payroll taxes to those making $400,000 and up. In 2020, only wages up to $137,700 are subject to those levies.

Existing, Not Living

If you are having to sit there and constantly pinch pennies--and I have done this--because you get only $633 a month in Social Security, sorry, but that is not "living." That is merely existing. You are just marking time until you die.

The reason this poor woman has so little to show for all her years in the labor force is because she worked in low-wage jobs, which result in getting lower Social Security benefits even when the system is set up to help replace a higher proportion of income than somebody who made more money. She lives in an area where it is apparently difficult for older people to land work, even part-time work.

The fact is, though, she is being penalized for being a woman independent of living off of a man. Our culture heavily penalizes women for doing so.

Yet Hillary Clinton, in a rare moment of cluelessness, waxes on and on about how "caregivers" should get even more in Social Security benefits, not realizing that it isn't married women who live off of men who are most vulnerable to poverty in old age. It is never-married and long-divorced women who are most vulnerable. The "caregivers" are already covered by Social Security and were the first group covered by it when it began in 1935. It specifically targeted women who were financially dependent on men because at that time there was no safety net for these women when they were alone. What Clinton believes--erroneously--is the widespread idea that women make less money than men because they pop in and out of the labor force for years at a time to stay home and care for babies and elderly relatives. This has always been bullshit. Women who don't do this--regardless of marital status and work histories--STILL fare poorly in old age. They are STILL underpaid compared to men across all occupations, with female-dominated occupations the most denigrated of all.

And why is that? It is because of an economic system that is heavily rigged against women because it underpays women believing they are dependents of men and therefore they don't need the money the way men do. It rigs the system against independent women by basically "encouraging" or coercing--depending on your point of view--women to get married and therefore benefitting men who somehow believe they have the right to sexual access of women's bodies by basically starving them if they don't marry. It is a harsh assessment, but it is the truth.

Women by the millions enter into one relationship with a man after another, one marriage after another, not because they are necessarily in love with the men but with the realization they cannot make it financially (especially if there are children involved) without a man. In a very real sense, marriage is a form of prostitution.

From the article:

Woodruff’s $633 monthly benefit is tight, but even someone who receives the average monthly benefit of $1,294 would need some type of financial assistance to get by. According to the advocacy group Wider Opportunities For Women, the monthly expenses for Americans 65 or older in 2013 totaled $1,645 for a single person living in their own house without a mortgage, $1,966 for a renter, and $2,481 for a single person with a mortgage (this includes housing, food, transportation, healthcare and miscellaneous expenses). For couples, it was $2,542, $2,863, and $3,378, respectively.

Clearly, those living solely on social security would need to cut way back on expenses or work to get by. Woodruff’s biggest sacrifice has been not being able to visit her little brother, who lives in a home for the developmentally challenged that’s a two-hour drive away. It’s one reason she’s diligent about saving as much as she can. “If there’s an emergency situation and I have to go see my brother, I can rent a car,” Woodruff says. A lack of a car also makes it harder to get around town, and makes even grocery shopping difficult because it’s hard for her to carry so many bags and the long bus ride means frozen or cold items could spoil. In addition, she’s also had to curtail outings with friends significantly. “My social life is virtually non-existent,” she says. “I can do dinner at a friend’s house or occasionally I might go out if it’s someplace cheap, but going out for a drink or dinner, I just can’t do that anymore.”

If I were her, I would try to find part-time work to augment the Social Security. Myself, I intend to do this for as long as I can.

Probably Won't Change in the Near Term

As far as I am concerned, the Windfall Elimination Provision is extremely outdated, for most workers today do not work in one job or career for 30 years.

It made assumptions that simply weren't true then and are less true now.

I don't think states that don't pay into Social Security are going to start paying into the system, however. The people who have or are posed to have generous pensions are not about to give those up.

However, that is an issue separate from the totally confiscatory WEP.

Not that it is going anywhere this session or in the near future, but here is a total repeal of WEP floating around in the House.

Mentioned in the first link is this good report about how teachers are screwed over on pensions and Social Security.

This article is also good and demonstrates how teachers are screwed over on pensions, especially since Congress allowed for longer vesting periods for state pensions than for those in the private sector. I am lucky I got vested in Nevada after five years, and I will also be vested in Oregon after five years, assuming I don't get sacked up here:

The safe harbor formula is easy to execute—bureaucrats need to look at only a few basic details about the plan—but doing so ignores some important variables. First, the safe harbor rules specifically carve out an exception for states to employ “vesting periods” that impose minimum requirements on the number of years an employee must work
before becoming eligible for pension benefits.8 With no constraints on vesting requirements, states can and do set vesting periods that are longer than what
would be required in the private sector. For example, non-Social Security states like Connecticut, Illinois, Georgia, and Massachusetts withhold all employer provided
retirement benefits from teachers until they have reached 10 years of service. (Social Security imposes its own requirement that workers contribute at least 10 years to qualify for some benefit. This works like a vesting requirement, except, unlike a vesting period in a single retirement plan, Social Security is not tied to a specific employer or state and more than 95 percent of jobs are covered by Social Security. The main exception is state and local government workers, including teachers in the 15 states without coverage.9
) These long vesting periods would be illegal in the private sector, where federal law requires all employees to vest within seven years.

In the 15 states that do not offer Social Security coverage to their teachers, an average of 52 percent of new teachers will fail to vest into their state retirement system, leaving them with no retirement benefit at all.10 The safe harbor provision specifically allows this.

I believe it is actually five years in the private sector for vesting. However, given how easily administrators fuck over teachers, I am surprised more teachers don't even vest in their pensions.

I am really lucky although my pensions will be dinky because I didn't work 30 years in one agency.

Social Security "Going Bankrupt" Always Was a Lie

It was first peddled back in the early 1980s by the Koch's Cato Institute, which of course opposed Social Security as a matter of ideology of its insane "libertarian" beliefs. They took what the SSA had said at the time about what might happen in the worst-case scenario--there were three--if no adjustments were made, and they perverted that to claim the program was going broke unless we handed it over to the Wall Street crooks.

So Congress and the Reagan administration made a few tweaks to the system, and Social Security, more than 30 years later, is still not in danger of "going broke." Furthermore, what the wingnuts are trying to do is create generational strife in their divide-and-conquer routine. They are also pulling this shit with public pensions trying to make people in the private sector resentful instead of them being resentful of the feds having created loopholes in ERISA that gave companies permission to gut private pensions.

It is all about undermining support while continuing to pick people's pockets in order to enrich themselves further. However, the Democrats have to be watched that they don't continue neoliberal bullshit from the likes of the WTO and other outfits still clinging to a libertarian economic cult that has been debunked again and again and again.

From the article:

Rubio misled his listeners by using the word bankrupt not to describe a situation in which Social Security has no money and must shut down, but one in which the Social Security trust fund reaches a balance of zero.

But a balance of zero in the trust fund is nothing like bankruptcy. (Rubio’s claim that Social Security’s supposed bankruptcy will then lead to national bankruptcy is so absurd as to require a separate column.) Even with a zero balance in the trust fund, the system could still pay benefits equal to incoming revenues, which would be (as I noted above) at least 71 percent of the maximum benefit level, even in a long-term depressed economy.

According to the trustees, the trust fund could reach a zero balance as early as 2028 in such a depressed economy, or in 2034 in the middle-range scenario (which is the estimate most often reported by news organizations as unquestioned fact).

If the economy returns to something like normal health, however, the trust fund would not be depleted during the entire 75-year range of the forecast (through 2090, when Chelsea will be 99 years old).

Great article.

Hearing on WEP Next Week

I guess having some kind of hearing on the "Windfall Elimination Provision" affecting millions of public sector workers including yours truly is a step in the right direction, but since a Republican is sponsoring this "recalculation" of SS benefits in order to be more fair to people affected by WEP, I don't trust it as far as I can throw it.

I think more people could be screwed than before. After all, the GOP has always been in the forefront to cut SS benefits, so I am not buying this legislation.

Nothing but outright repeal of WEP (and GPO) is acceptable.

Currently, the WEP reduces the Social Security benefits of 1.3 million people who also receive public pensions from work not covered by Social Security—for example, educators and other dedicated public servants who must take part-time or summer jobs to make ends meet. H.R.711 would replace the WEP with a new “public service fairness formula” for people who turn 62 during or after 2017. Under this formula, the Social Security Administration would take into account the years a public sector employee paid into Social Security versus the years that employee paid into a public pension system while working in a position not covered by Social Security. Under H.R. 711, Social Security benefits would be calculated as if all the worker’s earnings were subject to Social Security taxes. This amount would then be multiplied by the percent of earnings covered by Social Security, thus taking into account that Social Security benefits are based on Social Security wages.

Call me skeptical of anything coming out of Congress.

Things Have Gone Out of Whack Since 1970, Plus a Rant on SS Caregiver Credit

Saw this on Facebook and decided to post it here. We who were around then and can remember know this is the case:

The federal minimum wage then was $1.60 an hour, which was sufficient for one person to be able to afford to live.

Back then, people could actually afford a home on one income. Unions were strong and pushed for family wage jobs. Of course, women were largely shut out because they couldn't obtain credit on their own. However, housing costs didn't start to go out of whack until the mid-1970s, when the real estate industry decided, that because there were more two-income households, they would jack up the price of homeownership to fatten their wallets. Housing costs ever since are way out of line with wages and salaries. It is just assumed that there are two income earners in a household and that they make "good" money. Single people find it virtually impossible to be able to afford a home--meaning a stick house on a lot--not a manufactured home, not a condo, both of which don't increase in value or increase little in value compared to a traditional stick house.

In truth, being single, especially as a woman, is a one-way ticket to poverty.

To segue into another rant by yours truly, more tone deaf stuff is being proposed in Congress for "caregiver credit" in Social Security. This is yet another fucking handout to well-to-do people who do NOT need assistance and not to people most at risk for poverty in old age, meaning single women.

On the face of it, the caregiver credit sounds reasonable, but it is in fact not.


Congress just doesn't understand that most women, and this is what this proposal is allegedly trying to help, do NOT take ANY significant time off from the labor force to care for others. That is a MYTH. They simply can't afford to do it. ONLY the well-to-do can afford to do this for any extended period of time. The REASON women make less money than men is not because they take "time off" from the labor force caring for kids and parents--it is because women's work is DEVALUED by definition.

And why is women's work devalued? Because of the concept of the family wage, that the man is the breadwinner of the home, and women work for pin money. The mindset is still very much a part of our economy. It is assumed that all women get married, and because they get married, they don't NEED the money the way men do. They are not seen as primary wage earners but secondary wage earners. And if they are not married, they had better be because this society is going to starve them into poverty if they, to put it crudely, don't spread their legs out for some man in exchange for a roof over their heads. While almost all women see marriage as a personal choice, there is no denying there is an element of economic coercion into doing it. This mindset of women not needing to support themselves is true all across the board, across all occupations, but most notable in traditional women's jobs. Education, work habits, and skills have nothing to do with why women's work is denigrated and why they fare so poorly in old age.

The concept of men as primary wage earners and women as secondary wage earners underlies sex discrimination in the workplace.

Giving caregiver credit just further entrenches this concept when in fact dependent wives already have benefits not available to single women (unless they have been married 10 or more years), meaning spousal or survivors' benefits. Many married women do not take their own SS benefits because their share of their husbands' benefits are greater than their own.

Once again, single people and everybody else who cannot afford to take time off from the labor force are asked to subsidize those who are well-to-do.

Yep, I Am Taking Social Security Early

At about this time next year, I will be able to receive Social Security benefits. Unfortunately, my monthly benefit will force me to remain in the labor force at least on a part-time basis until I die, assuming I will not find full-time work in any field.

The GOP pulls shit like trying to raise the retirement age under the bogus reason that people are "living longer." They aren't unless they are rich. The GOP ignores the reality that many people are fired in their fifties for stupid reasons and can never work again in any kind of meaningful work. What in the hell are they supposed to do until they are 70?

Of course they are hoping these people long since die before they can collect.

Meanwhile, poorer women’s lifespans have actually shrunk, some studies show. Some groups of Americans are living shorter lives than their parents. This disturbing phenomenon is concentrated among women: the poorest 40 percent of women have lower life expectancies than the previous generation, one study found. Higher death rates among white women seem to drive this trend.

If you are never-married and female, you are really screwed.

Hey, Let's Raise the EARLY Retirement Age To 90

so that few people EVER live long enough to collect it.

God damn I hate these people who are spewing anti-SS nonsense simply because businesses want to get out of paying their share of the FICA tax.

Given the rampant age discrimination in the workplace, few people are going to last in the job market until age 70 or 75, especially when it comes to full-time work.

Yours truly will have to work until at least 70 to get a monthly Oregon PERS benefit instead of a cash payout, if I last long enough to get vested. I would be 64 then in 2019 to get the vesting.

If I go full-time in the next year or two doing a different job, then I could get the monthly pension benefit and at an earlier age. Right now at my piddling pay, I can't.

Perhaps confusion arises because “raising the age of retirement” sounds like a nice jobs program for older Americans, or an end to forced retirement. I sympathize with that position: Anyone who wants to retire later and work into old age should have a job. But that’s not what raising the retirement age would entail—the fact is, raising the Social Security retirement age represents a reduction in benefits: Because the monthly payments a person receives grow bigger the later in life he or she retires, raising the age cutoff reduces the total amount of money paid out.

If workers are kicked to the curb at 55 or 60, if not earlier, what in the fuck are they supposed to do given the terrible job market?

Raising the age ALWAYS means a cut in benefits.

The article, unfortunately, makes the erroneous claim that taking benefits at 62 lowers your SS benefit for life. That is false. You get the same total amount, but it is spread out over a longer period of time. In fact, there is something called the "break-even" factor that means one would have to be in his or her late 70s or older to where the taking it early vs. taking it at 66 or 70 would be equal. The fact is when you take it at 62 instead of 66, you have FOUR years of extra payments when you are still relatively healthy enough to enjoy them. Many people are still working, and that amount will continue to recalculate. Others, like yours truly, will be forced to take it at 62 because of cash flow issues.

Long Past Time to Purge the Third Way Fuckers From the Democratic Party

Note that I have put on my links list four out of the five Democratic presidential candidates' websites. I support Bernie Sanders, but my second choice is Martin O'Malley, who is much like Bernie Sanders on the issues but is younger and sleeker. O'Malley has come out with a plan to expand Social Security benefits (while not mentioning repealing WEP/GPO for public employees affected by it), but this is too much for the neolibs of the Third Way. Those assholes want to raise the retirement age to 70.

Why stop there? Why not raise it to 75, the age which the despicable Zeke Emanuel thinks is a good time to die? Why not 80? 90? 100?

These bastards want a large share of people to die before they get it. Already 15 percent of all of the people born during the Baby Boom of 1946-1964 are dead, and most of those never collected a dime in Social Security.

Here is O'Malley's idea, from his campaign site:

EXPANDING SOCIAL SECURITY SO AMERICANS CAN RETIRE WITH DIGNITY
Our parents and grandparents should be able to retire in dignity—not poverty. Yet today in America, too many retirees are struggling to make ends meet. At the same time, the economic pressures on millions of families—from stagnant wages and high housing costs, to a lack of affordable childcare and skyrocketing college tuition—have resulted in meager, if any, retirement savings for tomorrow’s retirees.

Our government must do more to improve the economic and retirement security of all Americans. That is why Governor O’Malley has set a national goal of increasing the number of Americans with adequate retirement savings by 50 percent within two terms in office.

As the first and most important step toward meeting that goal, Governor O’Malley will expand Social Security benefits—not reduce them or undermine Social Security in any other way. Second, O’Malley will also make it easier for private-sector workers to invest in their retirement. He will put commonsense protections in place to prevent older Americans from losing the savings they already have. And to ensure that all families can afford to save for retirement in the first place, O’Malley will continue to put forward detailed policies to raise the wages of all workers.

EXPAND AND PROTECT SOCIAL SECURITY FOR CURRENT AND FUTURE RETIREES

Social Security is one of our country’s greatest collective achievements. Since it was first implemented in 1935, Social Security has kept millions of elderly Americans out of poverty. Today—following the Great Recession, which decimated the retirement savings of millions of Americans—Social Security remains an especially critical lifeline for our parents and grandparents: without it, more than four in 10 Americans over 65 would be living in poverty.

We cannot ask seniors with modest savings to live on even less. Instead, we should expand Social Security so they can retire with the dignity they have earned over the course of their working lives.

As president, Governor O’Malley will:

Increase Social Security benefits for all retirees—both today’s and tomorrow’s. Governor O’Malley supports immediately boosting monthly benefits in a progressive manner for all Social Security was intended as a supplement to individual savings and pensions, but today, one in five married couples, and nearly half of unmarried individuals, rely almost exclusively on Social Security checks to survive. More than two-thirds of Americans near retirement will not have enough savings to maintain their current standard of living.
Strengthen Social Security’s long-term fiscal outlook. The solvency of Social Security is not in crisis: Social Security has adequate funds to pay full benefits through 2034. But to pay for expanded benefits, Governor O’Malley supports lifting the cap on the payroll tax for workers earning more than $250,000.In addition, Congress should implement policies to lift the wages of all workers, which will make meaningful contributions to Social Security’s long-term balance sheet. This includes raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and enacting comprehensive immigration reform.
Ensure Social Security benefits are sufficient to keep retirees out of poverty. The immediate future is dire for many Americans nearing retirement: one in five Americans has no retirement savings at all. To keep seniors out of poverty, Governor O’Malley supports increasing the special minimum social security benefit to 125 percent of the poverty line for Americans who have worked at least 30 years.
Increase Social Security benefits for minimum wage- and lower-income workers. As wealth inequality continues to widen and traditional middle class jobs prove harder to come by, Governor O’Malley supports adjusting “bend points” in the formula to give minimum-wage and lower- and middle-income workers more financial security.
Prevent benefits from eroding over time. Governor O’Malley supports using the Consumer Price Index for the Elderly (CPI-E) instead of the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners (CPI-W) to determine Social Security’s cost-of-living adjustments. The CPI-E provides a more accurate reflection of the higher cost of living for retirees than the current measure, which focuses on younger workers. Using the CPI-E will ensure that benefits do not erode for future generations of retirees.
Reform Social Security to support, rather than penalize, caregiving. Governor O’Malley supports providing up to five years of “caregiver credits” that would increase the 35-year wage base for those who spend an extended period of time providing full-time care for children, elderly parents, or other dependents. In practice, current methods of calculating benefits penalize workers, most often women, who take extended time off to care for their families.
Reject efforts to raise the Social Security retirement age. Governor O’Malley believes that raising the retirement age is a back-door way to cut benefits for lower-income workers. It harms these workers in two ways: by forcing them to delay retirement in jobs that are often physically difficult, and by reducing lifetime payouts compared to wealthier retirees, who live five years longer on average than their lower-income counterparts.
CREATE SIMPLE, STREAMLINED RETIREMENT SAVINGS OPPORTUNITIES

With the days of defined benefit plans long past, millions of hardworking Americans lack adequate savings to support their standards of living when they retire. Nearly one in three Americans has no retirement savings, rising to one in two for Americans under the age of 30. Current investment vehicles such as defined contribution plans and IRAs have been grossly inadequate and underutilized for preparing most working Americans for comfortable retirements.

As president, Governor O’Malley will:

Dramatically expand access to employer-based retirement plans. Half of all workers do not have access to a retirement plan. Among part-time and low-income workers, roughly seven in 10 lack an employer-based retirement option. Governor O’Malley would require employers with more than 10 employees to process an automatic employee contribution to an IRA for all employees, at a level determined by the employee (who would have the option to opt out).
Raise wages so all workers can afford to save. Since millions of hardworking Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck and struggle to save for retirement, raising the minimum wage and other wage policies are also critical to ensuring that today’s workers can retire with dignity and security in the future.
PROTECT SENIORS FROM RISKS TO THEIR FINANCIAL SECURITY

Older Americans face increased financial risks that threaten their ability to retire with dignity. Every day, unscrupulous lenders and scam artists attempt to separate seniors from their lifelong earnings. Republicans in Congress bent on slashing budgets attempt to undermine Social Security and other vital programs. And a growing number of aging Americans who need quality long-term care cannot afford it.

Implementing measures to better protect seniors from these threats to their financial security will help provide a stronger retirement firewall for millions of Americans.

As president, Governor O’Malley will:

Reject efforts to privatize Social Security. Governor O’Malley views proposals to privatize Social Security for what they are—a massive benefits cut that will gut Social Security, add to the federal debt, and leave future generations without the critical protections Social Security has provided for decades.
Increase penalties for those who defraud our seniors. Older Americans are often targets for financial scams and exploitation, at an estimated cost of nearly $3 billion a year. The vast majority of frauds go unreported. Governor O’Malley will advocate for policies to protect our seniors from financial fraud, including laws to increase penalties for the financial exploitation of older Americans, laws to allow financial advisors to refuse or delay transactions where clients are being defrauded or exploited, programs to better identify and report financial exploitation among older Americans, and increased investment in prosecutors and advocates to go after elderly abuse.
Fully implement the fiduciary rule. Under existing retirement advice rules, some brokers and financial advisers are allowed to sell Americans products even if they know they are poor investments. This conflict of interest, where advisers put their own bottom lines before helping their clients, costs workers saving for retirement $17 billion every year. President Obama has proposed a critical and commonsense rule to require those who give financial advice to put their clients’ interests first. Governor O’Malley will fully enforce this important fiduciary standard, protecting the retirement savings of millions of Americans and creating a level playing field for the many investment advisers who already act in their customers’ best interests.
Make affordable, high-quality long-term care a national priority. Americans’ longer lifespans are outpacing our ability to provide quality and affordable long-term care. Although seven out of 10 Americans will need home care at some point in their lives, many Americans and their families struggle to afford it. Nine out of 10 people who provide long-term care are women, while home care workers are underpaid, overworked, and lack important benefits and protections.As baby boomers age, now is the time to move forward, working with the private sector, to develop an efficient, affordable, and high-quality system to provide a diverse range of long-term care services for our seniors. Governor O’Malley will lay out a comprehensive plan for reforming long-term care and supporting caregivers in the coming weeks and months.

I Will Believe Repeal of the Odious WEP/GPO When I See It

Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio, one of those rare people who is actually a Democrat, yesterday introduced legislation that would repeal the legalized theft of Social Security benefits called the WEP/GPO. The number of the bill is Senate Bill S.1651.

Of course I will believe repeal when I see it. Many federal politicians give this thing lip service, but nothing ever gets beyond committee. It needs to get out of there and onto the Senate floor.

I know our Congress doesn't do shit by design, unless it passes something like TPP designed to screw the rest of us over, but at least they could get off their asses and repeal this shit.

They could raise the cap to offset the offsets if money is a problem, but instead these louts prefer to keep things the way they are.

As I mentioned before about this issue, these offsets were put in back in the era when people did work for one company for thirty years, and many public employees spent thirty years or more in public employment. That is why there is the "30-year" rule on "substantial earnings" to be exempt from the offsets. This is no longer true in either public or private employment, and these offsets absolutely force people, especially women, into poverty.

The public employees who do receive big pensions are typically those who don't qualify for SS in the first place because they don't have the 40 quarters to be eligible.

I will be lucky if I get 1k a month in both SS and a pension when I have to collect SS when I turn 62 a year-and-a-half from now. I am in classified work--part-time work--which means I can NEVER make "substantial earnings" that would count toward the 30 years that would make me exempt from the heinous WEP. I have about 24 years right now, but who knows what SS comes up with when I apply?

Republicans Heller (NV), Murkowski (AK), and Collins (ME), all from states affected by these offsets, have co-sponsored this legislation. Another Republican, Vitter from Louisiana, has also co-sponsored the repeal.

It's a good show, but I think idiot Orren Hatch is in charge of the Finance Committee, where these repeals always get buried.

A similar bill has been introduced in the House. It is called HR 973.

Dumbass Crook Never Had to Work a Day in His Life

What in the hell does Jeb know about the labor force? He was born with a silver crowbar up his ass.

Age discrimination is rampant, and many people are kicked to the curb YEARS before they can qualify for Social Security, even early Social Security.

Lotsa luck ever resuming the same pay or career once tossed out.

After four years of substituting, with NO money during the summer months to cushion the blow, I was able to land a regular part-time job with NO benefits or am pension-eligible. I could have retired at WCSD by now if I hadn't had been illegally fired seven years ago. There may be a chance of someday resuming teaching, but I am now 60 years old.

I may NEVER be able to quit the labor force entirely.

I am one of the "lucky" ones, I suppose, in that I found some kind of stable income.

If anything, the Social Security age should be lowered given the realities of the labor market.

Of Course We Could Have Pensions and More in Social Security

if the stupid people in D.C. would stop doing the bidding of the neolibs and corporations.

There is plenty of money for it if the elected officials would quit kissing ass.

BTW, that lousy TPP is back, and it looks like it will pass Congress.

This bunch never learns. No matter that these trade agreements are ruinous for this country and many others, their ideology or cult consumes them.

Along those lines, here are more reasons the TPP is a nasty piece of work.

Hell, No, We Shouldn't Privatize

You know, this bullshit of undermining Social Security because some morons who call themselves libertarians want Wall Street to loot the money so that retirees and the disabled can be (even more) destitute has just got to stop. I am fucking sick and tired of it.

The LIES that the Cato Institute, which admitted they told lies about Social Security for ideological reasons, that stretch back over thirty years ago by distorting the projections in the ridiculous claim that a federal program can go broke, still come up like returned bad pennies.

NO federal program can go broke because the federal government has the power to create currency.


But here we are again. You can thank that neoliberal shitbag who calls himself a Democrat for even entertaining the THOUGHT we should privatize it.

The more facts that are thrown into the neolibs' and wingnuts' faces that any privatization of social insurance DOESN'T work at all (look at the UK and Chile for examples), the more these idiots' beliefs become entrenched. It's nothing short of a goddamned cult, just like the animal rights shit.

I am so sick of it.

What the federal government needs to do is repeal WEP/GPO, which really screws the hell out of millions of people under some dumb belief that public employees make more money than those in the private sector, and they have these huge pensions if they and their agencies don't pay into Social Security. It ain't true, and no matter how tiny your public pension is, and mine is a mere $312 a month, I will STILL get shafted out of $100 a month on the Social Security I will have to take in about a year and half.

Sure I Am Going to Wait Until I Am 70

The top-selling book on Amazon is this book trying to con people to take Social Security at 70 or even later. This despite the fact many people like yours truly can't do it because of the inability to get full-time work.

The book sounds like a load of b.s. directed at the very rich who can afford to take the benefits later.

The "newspaper of record" has a book review or blurb of sorts, and of course the comments are better than the article and probably the book.

The book sounds like one-percenter horse manure. It doesn't apply if you have never married and you find yourself underemployed.


Edit: Okay. I downloaded the book and found only about two chapters applied to my situation at all. I am supposed to wait until I am 70 to take SS, and there was a chapter on the truly evil WEP/GPO. Since I get such an itty-bitty pension from Nevada and started getting it at 56, WEP won't fuck me up as badly than if I had waited until I was 65 to collect the full pension amount.

At least I did something right in this "expert's" eyes.

The book is still geared toward the well-off and not based on the real situations of most people.

Some of Us Don't Have the Luxury

of waiting to take Social Security later. Some of us were victimized by employers in our fifties and have never been able to get back on our feet. Some of us don't have spouses or have never had spouses, and therefore all of the advice is worthless and doesn't apply.

It's typical one-percenter garbage geared to fellow one-percenters.

If True, the Democratic Party is Dead

and this country is fucked:

As of today, after many weeks of progressive lobbying and pleading and petitioning nationwide, 47 members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus have refused to sign the letter, initiated by Congressmen Alan Grayson and Mark Takano, pledging to “vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits -- including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need.”

After all this time, refusal to sign the Grayson-Takano letter is a big tipoff that those 47 House members are keeping their options open. (To see that list of 47, click here.) They want wiggle room for budget votes on Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits. Most of them represent a left-leaning district, and some could be toppled by grassroots progressive campaigns.

This is all about kissing the ass of the fraud in the White House.

Obama never should have gotten the Democratic Party nomination in the first place, as he was so obviously a right-wing puppet serving his right-wing masters.

A Republican in Democratic Clothing

Who else?

This asshole waged war on the Great Society and the New Deal even before he was inaugurated. Believe me, I remember it.

To Obama, his plan to cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, while funding the Wall Street bailout, was an act of political courage. (In his interview with the Washington Post, he “pledged to expend political capital on the issue.”) It was his long-term plan, even though the polls showed widespread opposition to it. This was a matter not of expediency, but of conscience, for him: He needed to find some way to fund both the ongoing Wall Street bailouts, and the massive federal debt that would be caused by the 2008 Wall Street crash and its resulting plunge in federal tax collections. This “balanced approach,” of tax hikes and spending cuts, would be his solution to both problems.

Is there any doubt who this fucker's constituency really is? Does Robert Rubin ring a bell? Does Bill Gates? Does Eli Broad? Does Lloyd Blankfein? Does Peter J. Peterson?

A worse president I have yet to see, and all in the name of "Democratic Party principles."

He has single-handedly killed the Democratic Party brand for decades.

Remember who he admired as a "transformative" president?



He fancies himself as some deep thinker, but he has a piece of shit for a brain.

A "Democrat" Tries to Destroy the Legacies of FDR and LBJ

thanks to his utter bullshit "austerity" beliefs that everybody else should pay for the fuck-ups by his Wall Street backers. Those same backers should be in prison with their assets seized, not be allowed to further influence policy.

“I am willing to make tough choices that may not be popular within my own party, because there can be no sacred cows for either party,” Obama wrote in a letter to Congress included in the budget, referring to the move’s repudiation of the Democrats’ traditional association with the programs of the Great Society and New Deal.

The budget proposes to slash $400 billion from Medicare spending over ten years, and would introduce a new measure of the cost of living that would mean an effective cut of $130 billion from Social Security benefits during the same period.

This despite overwhelming opposition to this despicable proposal.

If Congress wants to impeach the fucker, I say go right ahead. He deserves it.

Paul Krugman is having a hard time facing the reality Barack Obama IS the real-life Manchurian candidate and Trojan horse of right-wing, billionaire and bankster, interests.

That "D" after Obama's name has inoculated him from much-deserved criticism and investigation as to who was backing him when he first ran for president in 2007 despite having very little national political experience.

It's time to take the mask off this fake.

Krugman:

Since the beginning, the Obama administration has seemed eager to gain the approval of the grownups — the sensible people who will reward efforts to be Serious, and eventually turn on those nasty, intransigent Republicans as long as Obama and co. don’t cater too much to the hippies.This is the latest, biggest version of that strategy. Unfortunately, it will almost surely fail. Why? Because there are no grownups — only people who try to sound like grownups, but are actually every bit as childish as anyone else.

After all, if whoever it is that Obama is trying to appeal to here — I guess it’s the Washington Post editorial page and various other self-proclaimed “centrist” pundits — were willing to admit the fundamental asymmetry in our political debate, willing to admit that if DC is broken, it’s because of GOP radicalism, they would have done it long ago. It’s not as if this reality was hard to see.

Krugman can't face the fact Obama is proposing this shit because he really IS one of them.

Social Security Needs to Be Expanded, Not Cut

Fat chance neolib millionaire Obama would EVER be in favor of this despite all of the financial devastation faced and experienced by millions of people over the age of 50:

In this policy paper, we offer one possible way to increase the overall public component of retirement security in the U.S. that
we call Expanded Social Security. Just as Medicare already has different components called Medicare A, B, C, and D, the
Expanded Social Security program that we propose would have two elements: Social Security A and Social Security B.

Under our proposal for Expanded Social Security, today’s Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI), commonly known simply as
“Social Security,” would be retained, possibly with modifications, as an earnings-based defined benefit program. This would be
renamed Social Security A. The expected shortfall in funding for promised benefits that is predicted to occur in the 2030s would
be made up for by revenue increases, not benefit cuts.

To supplement Social Security A, we would add a universal flat benefit for all retirees eligible for OASI called “Social Security
B.” Social Security B could be funded by revenues other than the payroll tax. Today’s Supplemental Security Income (SSI), a
means-tested antipoverty program that helps poor children and the disabled as well as the elderly, has always been funded out of
general revenues. SSI thus provides a precedent for expanding the funding base for Social Security B. Indeed, one option would
be to convert SSI into Social Security B.

The two components of Expanded Social Security, Social Security A and Social Security B, in combination would provide a
much greater share of pre-retirement income than today’s OASI does by itself for most Americans. This expansion of the public
share of the average American’s retirement income would make both tax-favored employer-based pensions and tax-favored
individual savings accounts less necessary, allowing federal tax expenditures for those private programs to be reduced or
eliminated. Combining major reductions in tax-favored private retirement savings programs with a substantial increase in the
public portion of the American security system would make the retirement security system as a whole more progressive, more
efficient, and more stable. Designed properly, a new retirement security system could substantially boost public retirement
benefits for most Americans without increasing the percentage of GDP devoted to the combined public and private elements of
our nation’s retirement system as a whole.

I like the idea, as long as those of us who have tiny pensions in states that didn't pay into Social Security aren't screwed over.

It shouldn't be the case if the money came out of general revenues.