Social Security is Not Broke

I’ve heard that Social Security is out of money. The Cold War was completely financed by the money withheld between 1946 and 1986. Trillions of dollars were taken from the general fund for spending on the military. By not isolating Social Security deductions from hundreds of millions of paychecks our elected leaders had all the money they needed to do whatever they wanted. If there was never a separate account – IT CAN’T BE BROKE! The beneficiaries of this spending were stockholders and upper management of the defense industry. Had this not happened, there would be a surplus so large it would pay larger checks with complete medical coverage and prescriptions for generations to come.

So what can we say about people that knew they were ruining our country while they passed their midnight acts where no could see what was going on?  For that matter why doesn’t the government make sure their spending is below their income like we have to do all our lives. If they over-spend, all they do is ask the Federal Reserve to print a few billion and then agree to pay 13% interest. Wouldn’t it be smarter to not over-spend? I’d go without a lot before I would borrow at 13%.

The corruption that builds up over 200 years is so entrenched that another constitutional convention is called for. It could take quite some time to develop an alternative to the current system but it would be well worth the effort. Something extreme needs to happen or America will end up looking like a fourth world country indebted to the world.

Seventeen weeks into the sale of the house and not so much as a low ball offer. When the president of Wells Fargo Bank says publicly that these are the worst times for real estate since the Great Depression, he isn’t kidding. In fact, there’s nothing funny about what’s going on.

If this is some kind of pyramid scheme where a person buys their spot on the pyramid board and waits patiently for the blocks to fill in until they get their money back, we’re just waiting for our turn. If prices fall to twenty year ago levels almost all of our retirement money will have disappeared in a single year. And we’ll go from occasional volunteering at the local mission serving the homeless to standing in those lines on a permanent basis. Is this the future the New World Order has in mind for all of us with personal estates under $10,000,000?

We never had that much in life, going without things is the way we got by. Unfortunately if you’re laid off at 55 years of age with seven years until the reduced social security checks, you’ll find the savings so painfully put away each year will fly out the door in a single month. Thirty years of savings will only get you 30 months plus whatever interest the funds had accumulated. NAFTA is one of the direct proofs that our government has declared war on Americans by making moving production offshore so lucrative that companies have no rational choice but to do so. Corporations were the masters that ordered our “elected leaders” to draft the act originally so it isn’t exactly a shock it makes big profits a cake walk, which they are allowed to defer the taxes on these profits.  

So it’s not so much our government that is the enemy of the American people it’s the corporations of this country who answer to the demanding greed of the investor class. These people demand 10-40 % return on their investments in a 3-5% inflation world. Unfortunately to get these outrageously high returns someone has to pay the price, that would be every hard working American that has to pay high rents, watch their wages get swallowed by millions of competitors swarming into our country, and still expected to spend every penny they have so the retail sector can stay healthy and prosperous.

When is enough, enough? If the top 1% of the population has fortunes so massive that their descendents can’t spend it all no matter how wastefully they live, isn’t it time to show some self control? Does America have to resemble some depressing sci-fi movie with masses wandering the earth in squalor, while the few live like kings of old? It’s Christmas Day and an excellent point to begin the process of giving some of that extreme wealth back to the faceless masses it was taken from. With 90% of all wealth in their possession, they are the only people that can make life in America any better.

  FDA Approved

According to Wikipedia, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is responsible for the safety regulation of most types of foods, dietary supplements, drugs, vaccines, biological medical products, blood products, medical devices, radiation-emitting devices, veterinary products, and cosmetics.

The FDA's federal budget request for 2008 totaled $2.1 billion, which seems plenty to protect Americans from dishonest providers of products. As I read all the departments involved and the scope of their responsibilities, it became obvious that there aren’t resources to do the job.

The FDA was extremely slow in warning the public as to the pet food fiasco where many Americans lost their beloved pets before the recalls were finally put in place. I was lucky in that I wasn’t buying any of the recalled list at the time.

All the effort drug companies go through to get FDA approval runs in the hundreds of millions so say nothing of medical equipment companies spend. So why do we have to buy test kits and rub various parts of toys to make sure we’re not killing our children? It turns out that the trade agreements our government officials have signed have such low testing and anti-poisoning statutes, that it was inevitable that our kids would be jeopardized in the process.

Besides sending the manufacturing jobs overseas that are involved with toy production the trade agreements made toxic poisons a cheap alternative to safe materials. These cost savings not only made for much larger corporate profits that make the investor class smile, but allowed huge incentive checks for the management teams that authorized the dangerous materials. Makes one wonder if they bring any of these deadly toys home for their own kids, doesn’t it.

I’m getting old, haven’t had a job in years, still using 401 money to get to 62, can’t sell the house in this market, can’t find toys that aren’t made in China, everything thing points to that song, “Is that all there is?”.

Then while listening to a couple of folk singers leading the crowd in various Christmas carols at a public market, it lands. Christmas, that is. I looked around and didn’t recognize anyone but my wife next to me, yet people seemed as though we were all in this thing called life together. I felt protective towards little kids running around with their fresh eyes and high energy. I noticed mothers with young daughters as they shopped, both happy to be with the other. I saw old men in cheap suits walking as if there will be another day. I saw young families sitting at tables eating and talking as all families do. I even sang softly with others as the overwhelming sense of belonging to the community of people gathered there that day. I smiled at anyone who looked at me and got back same by young and old alike.

America is alive and well. People are more like me than different. We are all in this together and I wish them all the best. These feelings are strange after months of depression and disinterest in life. Life is worth living even for someone with old tired eyes and a rusty soul. God bless the children, mothers and caring fathers, and all with kindness in their hearts.

I’m so thankful Christmas arrived. I needed the break from my reality. I need Christmas. I love Christmas. I love my family and I’m looking forward to Christmas Eve and the entire scene that goes with the next day. I wish it could last all year long, not the shopping, but the sense of happiness and belonging to the world, of good will towards others, and of the sense of hope that everything will be just fine for our children’s children.

During the eighties I’d read articles in the Wall Street Journal about jobs being sent to China. I was in management in the sales arena of electronic components, even then I knew that wasn’t good news for America. This trend continued through the nineties when off shoring became the battle cry of America’s industrial might being handed the communist country. Now that I lost my job to a Mexican in Renosa for a tenth of what I was making it has become perfectly clear that manufacturing is essentially gone.

I went out to buy a desk lamp for a table I planned to do some doodle art (the only pastime I can afford these days) when I was told every lamp in the store was made in China, regardless of whether the company was Canadian, American or European. I asked the sales person if there was a store in town that might have exception to this reality. I drove across town and found a German halogen for $377.95 which I passed on. Then after a couple of second hand stores I found a lamp made in Taiwan for $39.00 and bought it on the spot, claiming victory after spending all day looking.

After the lead paint found in much of the Chinese made products with the direct knowledge of American executives fiasco this Christmas, I had driven my personal stake in the ground – no more “Made in China” products. I wasn’t sure why corporate CEOs were knowingly trying to kill off our young, but I suspected it had to do with being traitors to our people by giving our enemies our jobs and now working with the enemy to kill our children. We’re still in the cold war only now the communists have powerful friends in Washington and board rooms all over our country.

I don’t care how many things I go without until I die. I still won’t kill my granddaughter off for corporate profits and the exploding wealth of the investor class in our country no matter what.

When I was a boy all I ever heard was how great America was, how lucky I was to be born here, and how lucky for the world America was there for it in WWII. This self worship still can be found in many if not most places in our country. Don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t live anywhere else. But I’m afraid we’re about to get our “comeupins”.

Many things had to happen before the US would be vulnerable enough to get really hurt bad in the next few years.

            1) Since WWII Americans have had the good life, first from being the only factories standing after most of the world had been blown to bits, then by borrowing money and spending it as if there’s no tomorrow. Now we’re upside down on many of our homes and into the credit cards in a big way.

            2) In an attempt to mine the human wealth of Asia, US companies as well as European ones has devoted enough capital, plant and equipment, and management to revive our countries twice over to build up a producer/consumer block so powerful as to dictate the US foreign and fiscal policy for decades to come.

            3) A refusal of the petroleum industry for the last 40 years to build more refinery plants in spite of increasing demand then say at this point they can’t reduce prices, it’s a demand problem of emerging nations needing more oil.

            4) The formation of the Euro, the first megacurrency capable of providing world liquidity if called on to do so. The Europeans are super savers compared to the US and therefore a tight fisted approach works well for a steady currency. One point to remember is their CEOs don’t make 100 to 1000 times an average employee.

            5) A cold war/ arms race that ended up destroying the Soviet Union, we ended up a debtor nation by the way in the same war.

It used to be not that long ago that “if America coughed the rest of the world caught a cold” now it’s more like “if America has pneumonia the rest of the world would suffer from sniffles.” It’s easy to point out various bad guys in this situation but we all had something to do with if we’re honest about it. Dropping my asking price for my house each month in response to others dropping their price, I wonder what will this all come to. Since 70% of our economy is American consumers, what would happen if we can’t borrow on the equity in our homes? What spending will I do if I can’t sell the thing for more than I owe, forget having a down for another place? If China backs off buying US T-bills and gas prices go to $5.00 or more, the world just might get the last laugh after all.

“In God We Trust” is engraved on every coin of the realm these days, put there during Eisenhower’s administration to differentiate the United States from the evil empire of the Soviet Union. I guess the powers that be thought it important to clearly mark the good guys from the bad ones. This is interesting because it was western capitalists that financed the Bolshevik Revolution for a mere twenty million dollars. Pretty cheap set up charges to create the boogieman that’s behind every tree so the military-industrial complex can charge the America people trillions over the next century to protect us from their evil offspring.

God has also been said to be on the side that demolishes other people in His name sake. “God, help us do thy will” was part of the prayer said on both sides of the line in the Civil War. God reportedly has directed Islamic warriors to “Kill the Infidel.” The Israelites were convinced God wanted them to have the land of Canaan (Palestine). Pretty much when ever ambitious men decide to take land from another they evoke the will of God somehow to cleanse what they are about to do. How many Protestants died for blasphemy in the dark ages, 50 million or so?

The founding fathers were so concerned that the Church of England not become as powerful in the colonies as it was in England, they put the separation between church and state phrase into the Constitution. This basically said there couldn’t be an official religion for the country. It did not say one in high office couldn’t have a personal belief system just that he couldn’t elevate that religion to being the official one for his constituents.

Recently the governor of Georgia held prayer services off state grounds to pray for rain. This act has caused some serious concern in various circles. I don’t see the problem. He has that right as a citizen to pray to his God. The fact that he did so at a announced place and time is unfortunate, but still his right to do so. The time to get really concerned is the day a national Sunday law is passed where all citizens are required to worship on Sunday, that they will not be able to buy or sell on that day and people are urged to report any and all violations. That’s the kind of thing the founding fathers were greatly concerned about, not whether some governor of a drought plagued state offers up a prayer.

The fact that over an inch of rain fell the next day is beside the point.

Drawing against your 401

First of all keep in mind you didn’t pay taxes on any of the money you put into your 401. Your W2 showed two different earnings figure, one that was gross earned income and a second which was taxable earnings. Not only that but whatever interest is earned over time has also escaped taxation. These are funds that are meant to supplement social security and any other retirement program you are entitled to through work. Pensions were the vehicles of years gone by, almost extinct except for public service jobs.

Ideally you have, besides what your social security, other investments for retirement. Some investments are tax deferred like 401 s but come due in their entirety when disposed of, like some variable annuities and all rental property gains.

If you find yourself without an income and you are under 59 ½ years of age, you can draw against your 401 balance, while incurring a 10% penalty for early retirement. There are some exceptions to the 10% penalty. There is no limit as to how much of the account you may withdraw, just whether or not the amount is penalized. Exceptions to the 10% penalty include: you left your company while you were 55 or older, if you withdraw money in substantially equal payments made at least annually over your life expectancy or of you and your designated beneficiary, if you become disabled as the Internal Revenue Code defines it, and finally a withdrawal for certain medical expenses as long as they do exceed the amount allowed as a deduction on your income tax (not all plans allow for such withdrawals). As a result of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, all hardship withdrawals are not eligible to be rolled over therefore are subject to federal income tax withholding at the time of the withdrawal unless payee elects out of withholding. Seeking the advice of a tax advisor is recommended in such complicated issues. These are the general rules of exception to the 10% penalty.

If you’re lucky enough not to need any of the funds until later in life, you must begin to withdraw funds at 70 ½ years of age. Although, again you may withdraw all the funds if you wish, there is no maximum limit. The formula for minimum withdrawal is a complicated one. It will depend on your age at withdrawal and your life expectancy, the value of the account at that time, and if a spouse is involved, their age and life expectancy. Then there is the type of scheduled withdrawals you choose at that time, like schedules picked for amortizing assets, once chosen you’ll be expected to stay with that chose all the through the account.

These are complicated tax issues and professional advice is called for. I’m just mentioning some of the aspects that will be discussed at your meeting.

Third Party in 2008?

It’s been tried before. Actually there are hundreds of parties that are neither Democrat nor Republican. What people are referring to is a party that miraculously gains enough votes to win the Electoral College in 2008. But, unless this mysterious phenomenon can also win a majority in the House and Senate, about all the new president will be able to do is shut down the government by refusing to sign various appropriation bills. The most a third party has been able to do in history is to put pressure on the most similar-minded party. Since both parties compete to assure corporate America that they’ll give more of the store away than the other, a third party shouldn’t have much effect.

Suppose someone arose in the crowd we could believe in and all 30,000,000 of us fed-up Americans sent in $100; at least advertising would be covered. Both houses of Congress would need to be won. Where do you find enough honest men to dirty their hands with politics; the world of the most “I can be bought” humans on earth.

The corporations and the “investor class” that own them would immediately attack the new party in the media, while at the same time attempting to bribe, slander, corrupt, even kill, where the race is close. No oligarchy will allow a system they control completely to fall into the hands of men and women that will refuse to commit treason every day they go to work. So sit down and shut up, there’s not going to be salvation for the American people. Pick which corrupt candidate is the least repugnant to you personally and vote for him just like you have before.

Even though a third party cannot win either branch of government, there has been success in the social arena that came about through third parties. In the late 1800s both the Prohibition and the Socialists parties promoted the idea of women’s right to vote. The Socialists party also endorsed child labor laws. The Populists party insisted on immigration reform. It was this same period that both the Socialists and the Populists parties backed both the reduction of work hours and the progressive income tax. In the 1920s the Socialists party favored Social Security as an institution in America. It took many decades for these topics to end up as laws, neither the Republican or Democratic parties can claim they helped in the early fight for these laws.

The Libertarian party is the third largest, and although they haven’t seen a president yet they have won many local and state elections. Libertarians believe that the federal government should play a minimum role in day-to-day lives of Americans. If you go on Google and type third parties then search you’ll have more than enough reading to do for days on end.

National Debt  June 15 2006 was $ 8,337,290,510,783.04 God knows what it is now!

What will our grandkids have to pay for interest on the national debt? Today we pay over $230 Billion a year. Paying $300-500 Billion a year is not beyond our reach. Our country could go from spending 7% on debt to 10% even 15%. These kinds of expenditures will cripple if not destroy the future of all Americans, except for the top 3% whose future is rosy no matter what happens.

Who do we owe the money to? The Federal Reserve is the largest single holder of the debt and the interest income that comes from ownership at 40.6 % totaling 3.4 Trillion. Next comes foreign countries at 22.7 % some 1.8 Trillion (Japan 850 Billion, China 238 Billion are by far the largest owners). The balance is a list of entities none higher than 7% that includes insurance companies, mutual funds, pension funds both public and private, state and local governments and their retirement funds, banks, and US savings bonds.

Our country can never get out of debt with elected officials ear-marking projects to reward wealthy contributors back home, accepting huge sums from corporations that want laws to provide easy access to public money and monopoly pricing advantages, and the ever present shoveling of income to foreign citizens at the expense of once-employed Americans. This selling of America is being done on such a scale that our grandkids will be lucky to have pot or anything else to pee in.

Treason used to carry the penalty of death. Let’s bring back the good old days, when betraying a country was a dangerous thing to do.

The national debt started on January 1, 1791 at $75 million (about the increase per hour these days). The following shows the growth of the debt over time:

                        1982                            1  Trillion

                        1987                            2     

                        1989                            3

                        1992                            4

                        1995                            5

                        2002                            6

                        2003                            7

                        2005                            8

Is it me or does going up a Trillion almost every year seem bad, really bad.                         

It's like taking a 500% of current value of home mortgage out on your home that your kids are legally liable for paying without any bankruptcy clauses to provide an out. Then spending like a drunken sailor and dying. Have our leaders no shame.

The history of failures is as long as the list of countries we’ve applied sanctions on. Cuba is a good example. Mr. Castro looks pretty good for an arch enemy of the US for over 50 years. Countries and exporters world-wide continue to ship goods into the country. Many of our most successful men smoke cigars from Cuba, knowing they are illegal, but rich men breaking our laws is another rant altogether.

Iraq sanctions didn’t bring down the leadership, only caused the death of untold numbers of women and children, far exceeding the genocide we have Saddam in court for. Saddam gases 5,000-10,000 Kurds, with our chemical weapons it turns out, and our government jumps on their high horses about immorality. We starved a million people to death, over half were children. The sanctions killed 200,000-500,000 children under five (three times the Japanese deaths from two atomic bombs).

Originally adopted in 1945, economic sanctions were touted as a means of maintaining global order. Between its inception through 1989 (44 years) it was imposed twice. Since 1990 (16 years) it has been imposed 12 times. So, from once every 22 years average to almost every year, countries usually with the US in the lead or unilaterally have used it to make a country obey.

The psychological and spiritual degeneration is a war crime. Sanctions represent the opposite of a just war: from wars that only involve soldiers to ones that only involve civilians. How much more angry would America have been if Japan had bombed San Francisco instead of Pearl Harbor, a city instead of a military base.

The American people should be asked when we want a people starved to death. Because it is done in our name, only the American people should have the final decision as to whether we want a nation to hate us for all time. If a country starved my granddaughter to death, I would spend every ounce of energy until I die, killing their soldiers and their families wherever they might be. Do not kill Iranian women and children by starvation, not only is it cowardice, it is evil. 

No More Drugs

By Lloyd Hudson Frye

The man on the TV lights up and he draws in the smoke, slow and deliberately. I wince at the scene and think back to my cigarettes on the deck with just the quiet of the morning and the occasional bird fluttering by. It wasn’t the inhale with the accompanying delicious pain, but the exhale, the feeling that all was right on the earth and my eyes close in pleasure ever so slightly. Then I remember I don’t smoke any more and a craving comes over me. I quickly think of the dry mouth, the ashes dropping onto my dress slacks, and the quick brushing them off. The next thought to battle the urge: how I couldn’t get below eight cigs a day for more than one day; then I’d smoke 12 or 13 the next day to get back the minimum level necessary in my body to live.

I look out the window to change the subject and allow the scene in the movie to change. There, out in front of God and everyone, is a man smoking on the sidewalk, knowing I was inside watching him. He makes a great effort to smile and show the pleasure he’s in just to torment me. Someday, I hope he pays for his cruelty.

I look back at the TV; the man is drinking what looks like Bourbon on the rocks—I change channels, but not before the image of a Mai Tai is on the screen. The golden, yellow-orange color with just a hint of cherry juice riding on top of the three, cold, smooth layers of rum floating on top. The Maraschino cherry is gone, of course, always slurped up when the drink is brought to announce the threshold of heaven is upon me. The sip, the swallow, the spread of warmth from the belly out to all the ends of the body, nothing can hurt me now.

Then I remember I quit drinking too. I lost more than one job from seeking heaven using the back door. Now the refrigerator has six beers sit in the vegetable tray from a local microbrewery, there since last summer. Six because that was what it took before I was happy and ready for more.

Next, I turn to public TV hoping for something with a moderator with a monotone voice to wash my mind. It’s a special on the sixties and guys are passing around a short, fat joint at a concert. Now there was an excellent exhale. If the dope was strong enough, one went out of the body while a paralysis took over and blacking out became a real possibility. The smart thing was to relax and not panic, try to focus and whatever you do, don’t try to stand up or bend over for a few seconds; the room’s regular lighting will come back into view. God, did I really finish that BC bud stash I kept hidden in the back of the freezer for three years, when I quit smoking cigarettes. And to make sure the police wouldn’t get me for anything, I even threw the sticky, moist pocket pipe with the inner chamber and screw on lid in the outgoing garbage.

Maybe I could relieve the pain with one of those Vicadin up on the prescription shelf, left over from the root canal when I told the dentist I didn’t want to be in pain for days and he gave me a scrip for 40 500 mg pills after I said, “the bigger ones work better,” as if I didn’t know much about the opiate family of products. No, they were gone too along with the Peradan, Percocet, Oxicontin, and my favorite, Morphinadrone from an urologist. Gees, the poppy has been one of God’s special plants.

I got up went to the kitchen to fix some instant coffee. I put an extra amount in the cup, just short of what would make me have stomach cramps. While I’m waiting for the water to boil, I think about the good old days before 1968 when a guy could call in a prescription for Dexamil, and by using the lingo of the doctor’s office, have a scrip waiting for him under a false name with no written prescription. Damn, now there was a drug that made everything alright with a careful balance of Meth and a lovely barbiturate to smooth it out. Went 10-12 days in a row without sleeping and drew some of the most intricate drawings of my life, while in the Santa de Cristo mountains above Sante Fe.

My life is much easier to control with those things out of it, much less the heroin, cocaine, Belladona, black tar opiated hashish, Darvon, Bezedrine, Peyote buttons from Arizona, Magic mushrooms from cow patties outside of Houston, LSD from God knows where, black mollies, paint thinner, airplane glue, Freon, Ether, morning glory seeds (especially pearly gates and heavenly blue), and countless other wonders of the earth.

I went back to watching TV with my coffee and enjoyed the slightly elevated condition a few minutes later.