Obama Labor Pick's Support for Gay Rights Worries Conservatives

President Obama's recess appointment of an outspoken supporter of gay rights to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is causing alarm among social conservatives, who worry that she'll strip religious rights from schools and businesses and "revolutionize" social norms in the workplace.

The appointment of Georgetown University Law Center Professor Chai Feldblum to be one of the EEOC's five commissioners went largely unnoticed on Saturday, as Republicans zeroed in on Obama's naming of pro-union labor lawyer Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board.

But Feldblum has garnered harsh criticism from conservative religious organizations, who are disturbed by her work to promote gay, lesbian, and transgender rights, including past comments in which she said "gay sex is morally good."

"She is way beyond what most Americans would consider mainstream," Shari Rendall, director of Legislation and Public Policy at Concerned Women for America, said in a statement.

A host of conservative groups say Feldblum, who was nominated in September, will use her powerful post to enforce the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would prohibit private employers with more than 15 employees from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

The legislation clearly states that the act does not apply to corporations, associations or educational institutions with religious affiliations. But Feldblum's critics worry that other employers could be forced to make decisions that conflict with their religious or moral beliefs. 

While Feldblum's work to end prejudice against gays and lesbians has been lauded by many in the legal community, conservative groups say her appointment to the EEOC will have detrimental and far-reaching consequences.

"She wants to change the moral bearing of this country," said Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition. Lafferty said the hiring of a transgender teacher in a school, for example, would be "traumatizing" for students who are "still growing and learning about sexuality."

"We send children to school to learn reading, writing and arithmetic. Having a transgender or 'she-male' teacher in the classroom should not be part of that equation," she said.

Feldblum's public comments and causes have raised alarm among social conservatives. In a 2004 speech at UCLA, she said "gay sex is morally good" and boasted about a project she launched, known as Workplace Flexibility 2010, which she said aimed to "change the face of the American workplace" and "revolutionize social norms."

The Obama administration is standing by its decision to appoint the Harvard-educated attorney to the EEOC, an independent federal agency that enforces laws against workplace discrimination.

In a posting on the White House Web site, the administration listed Feldblum's formidable credentials, including her work as legislative counsel to the AIDS Project of the American Civil Liberties Union and her help in drafting the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

Obama made 15 recess appointments on Saturday, including Becker and Feldblum. White House deputy communications director Jen Psaki wrote, "Many of these fifteen individuals have enjoyed broad bipartisan support, but have found their confirmation votes delayed for reasons that have nothing to do with their qualifications. It has more to do with an obstruction-at-all-costs mentality that we’ve been faced with since the President came into office."

In an interview with FoxNews.com on Wednesday, Winnie Stachelberg, senior vice president for external affairs at the Center of American Progress, said claims that Feldblum will promote an agenda that seeks to discriminate against religious businesses and schools are unfounded.

"She understands better than most the need for religious liberty and free speech and protections of civil rights," said Stachelberg. "The work that she has done to tackle thorny issues between business and labor and civil rights groups puts her in a uniquely qualified spot to serve on the EEOC. She has the support of Republicans and Democrats, religious conservatives and religious liberals and a lot of people in between."

Also supporting Feldblum's appointment to the EEOC is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which lauded her credentials in a Dec. 9, 2009, letter to Sens. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., who serve on the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.

Randy Johnson, the chamber’s senior vice president of labor, immigration, and employee benefits, wrote that Feldblum and fellow nominee Victoria A. Lipnic are "tremendously bright and capable professionals who will bring a wealth of diverse experience to the EEOC."

"While it is true that the chamber will not always agree with either Ms. Lipnic or Ms. Feldblum on every issue," wrote Johnson, "we have no doubt that each will be open to hear and consider the concerns of the business community and all interested stakeholders in matters under the EEOC’s jurisdiction."

This Letter Says Speaks For Many Americans.

http://www.patriotfreedom.org/files/file_4a9ee094e801d594635.pdf

CBO: US Deficit To Hit 90% of GDP In 10 Years!!! Way To Go Congress.

WASHINGTON -- A new congressional report released Friday says the United States' long-term fiscal woes are even worse than predicted by President Barack Obama's grim budget submission last month.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicts that Obama's budget plans would generate deficits over the upcoming decade that would total $9.8 trillion. That's $1.2 trillion more than predicted by the administration.

The agency says its future-year predictions of tax revenues are more pessimistic than the administration's. That's because CBO projects slightly slower economic growth than the White House.

The deficit picture has turned alarmingly worse since the recession that started at the end of 2007, never dipping below 4 percent of the size of the economy over the next decade. Economists say that deficits of that size are unsustainable and could put upward pressure on interest rates, crowd out private investment in the economy and ultimately erode the nation's standard of living.

Still, the Feb. 1 White House budget plan was a largely stand-pat document that avoided difficult decisions on curbing the unsustainable growth of federal benefit programs like the Medicare health care program for the elderly and Medicaid, which provides health care to the poor and disabled.

Instead, Obama has created an 18-member fiscal reform commission that's charged with coming up with a plan to shrink the deficit to 3 percent of the economy within five years. But the Republicans to be named to the panel by congressional GOP leaders are unlikely to go along with any tax increases that might be proposed, which could ensure election-year gridlock.

"While the president is intent on ramming through Congress a new trillion-dollar health-care entitlement, he appears far less concerned with addressing the looming crisis of entitlement spending already on the books," said Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the top Republican on the Budget Committee. "Instead, he delegates this task to a 'Fiscal Commission' -- which would not even report until after the next election."

The report says that extending tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 under GOP President George W. Bush and continuing to update the alternative minimum tax so that it won't hit millions of middle-class taxpayers would cost $3 trillion over 2011-2020. The tax cuts expire at the end of this year and Obama wants to extend them -- except for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and couples making $250,000.

For the ongoing budget year, CBO predicts a record $1.5 trillion deficit. That's actually a little better than predicted by the White House, but at 10 percent of gross domestic product, it's bigger than any deficit in history other than those experienced during World War II.

The new report predicts that debt held by investors, including China, would spike from $7.5 trillion at the end of last year to $20.3 trillion in 2020. That means interest payments would more than quadruple -- from $209 billion this year, to $916 billion by the end of the decade.

Academic Paper in China Sets Off Alarms in U.S.- Bring Down Power Grid

It came as a surprise this month to Wang Jianwei, a graduate engineering student in Liaoning, China, that he had been described as a potential cyberwarrior before the United States Congress.

Ken Cedeno for The New York Times

Larry M. Wortzel, a military strategist, recently drew attention to the paper.

Larry M. Wortzel, a military strategist and China specialist, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on March 10 that it should be concerned because “Chinese researchers at the Institute of Systems Engineering of Dalian University of Technology published a paper on how to attack a small U.S. power grid sub-network in a way that would cause a cascading failure of the entire U.S.”

When reached by telephone, Mr. Wang said he and his professor had indeed published “Cascade-Based Attack Vulnerability on the U.S. Power Grid” in an international journal called Safety Science last spring. But Mr. Wang said he had simply been trying to find ways to enhance the stability of power grids by exploring potential vulnerabilities.

“We usually say ‘attack’ so you can see what would happen,” he said. “My emphasis is on how you can protect this. My goal is to find a solution to make the network safer and better protected.” And independent American scientists who read his paper said it was true: Mr. Wang’s work was a conventional technical exercise that in no way could be used to take down a power grid.

The difference between Mr. Wang’s explanation and Mr. Wortzel’s conclusion is of more than academic interest. It shows that in an atmosphere already charged with hostility between the United States and China over cybersecurity issues, including large-scale attacks on computer networks, even a misunderstanding has the potential to escalate tension and set off an overreaction.

“Already people are interpreting this as demonstrating some kind of interest that China would have in disrupting the U.S. power grid,” said Nart Villeneuve, a researcher with the SecDev Group, an Ottawa-based cybersecurity research and consulting group. “Once you start interpreting every move that a country makes as hostile, it builds paranoia into the system.”

Mr. Wortzel’s presentation at the House hearing got a particularly strong reaction from Representative Ed Royce, Republican of California, who called the flagging of the Wang paper “one thing I think jumps out to all of these Californians here today, or should.”

He was alluding to concerns that arose in 2001 when The Los Angeles Times reported that intrusions into the network that controlled the electrical grid were traced to someone in Guangdong Province, China. Later reports of other attacks often included allegations that the break-ins were orchestrated by the Chinese, although no proof has been produced.

In an interview last week about the Wang paper and his testimony, Mr. Wortzel said that the intention of these particular researchers almost did not matter.

“My point is that now that vulnerability is out there all over China for anybody to take advantage of,” he said.

But specialists in the field of network science, which explores the stability of networks like power grids and the Internet, said that was not the case.

“Neither the authors of this article, nor any other prior article, has had information on the identity of the power grid components represented as nodes of the network,” Reka Albert, a University of Pennsylvania physicist who has conducted similar studies, said in an e-mail interview. “Thus no practical scenarios of an attack on the real power grid can be derived from such work.”

The issue of Mr. Wang’s paper aside, experts in computer security say there are genuine reasons for American officials to be wary of China, and they generally tend to dismiss disclaimers by China that it has neither the expertise nor the intention to carry out the kind of attacks that bombard American government and computer systems by the thousands every week.

The trouble is that it is so easy to mask the true source of a computer network attack that any retaliation is fraught with uncertainty. This is why a war of words, like the high-pitched one going on these past months between the United States and China, holds special peril, said John Arquilla, director of the Information Operations Center at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

“What we know from network science is that dense communications across many different links and many different kinds of links can have effects that are highly unpredictable,” Mr. Arquilla said. Cyberwarfare is in some ways “analogous to the way people think about biological weapons — that once you set loose such a weapon it may be very hard to control where it goes,” he added.

Tension between China and the United States intensified earlier this year after Google threatened to withdraw from doing business in China, saying that it had evidence of Chinese involvement in a sophisticated Internet intrusion. A number of reports, including one last October by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, of which Mr. Wortzel is vice chairman, have used strong language about the worsening threat of computer attacks, particularly from China.

“A large body of both circumstantial and forensic evidence strongly indicates Chinese state involvement in such activities, whether through the direct actions of state entities or through the actions of third-party groups sponsored by the state,” that report stated.

Mr. Wang’s research subject was particularly unfortunate because of the widespread perception, particularly among American military contractors and high-technology firms, that adversaries are likely to attack critical infrastructure like the United States electric grid.

Mr. Wang said in the interview that he chose the United States grid for his study basically because it was the easiest way to go. China does not publish data on power grids, he said. The United States does and had had several major blackouts; and, as he reads English, it was the only country he could find with accessible, useful data. He said that he was an “emergency events management” expert and that he was “mainly studying when a point in a network becomes ineffective.”

“I chose the electricity system because the grid can best represent how power currents flow through a network,” he said. “I just wanted to do theoretical research.”

The paper notes the vulnerability of different types of computer networks to “intentional” attacks. The authors suggest that certain types of attacks may generate a domino-style cascading collapse of an entire network. “It is expected that our findings will be helpful for real-life networks to protect the key nodes selected effectively and avoid cascading-failure-induced disasters,” the authors wrote.

Mr. Wang’s paper cites the network science research of Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, a physicist at Northeastern University. Dr. Barabasi has written widely on the potential vulnerability of networks to so-called engineered attacks.
“I am not well vested in conspiracy theories,” Dr. Barabasi said in an interview, “but this is a rather mainstream topic that is done for a wide range of networks, and, even in the area of power transmission, is not limited to the U.S. system — there are similar studies for power grids all over the world.”

The Truth About the Health Care Bills

A retired Constitutional lawyer has read the entire proposed healthcare bill. Read his conclusions. 
This is stunning!


The Truth About the Health Care Bills Michael Connelly, Ret. Constitutional Attorney.


Well, I have done it!  I have read the entire text of proposed House Bill 3200: The Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009. I studied it with particular emphasis from my area of expertise, constitutional law.  I was frankly concerned that parts of the proposed law that were being discussed might be unconstitutional. What I found was far worse than what I had heard or expected.


To begin with, much of what has been said about the law and its implications is in fact true, despite what the Democrats and the media are saying.  The law does provide for rationing of health care, particularly where senior citizens and other classes of citizens are involved, free health care for illegal immigrants, free abortion services, and probably forced participation in abortions by members of the medical profession.

The Bill will also eventually force private insurance companies out of business, and put everyone into a government run system. All decisions about personal health care will ultimately be made by federal bureaucrats, and most of them will not be health care professionals. Hospital admissions, payments to physicians, and allocations of necessary medical devices will be strictly controlled by the government.

However, as scary as all of that is, it just scratches the surface. In fact, I have concluded that this legislation really has no intention of providing affordable health care choices. Instead it is a convenient cover for the most massive transfer of power to the Executive Branch of government that has ever occurred, or even been contemplated  If this law or a similar one is adopted, major portions of the Constitution of the United States will effectively have been destroyed.

The first thing to go will be the masterfully crafted balance of power between the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches of the U.S. Government..  The Congress will be transferring to the Obama Administration authority in a number of different areas over the lives of the American people, and the businesses they own.

The irony is that the Congress doesn't have any authority to legislate in most of those areas to begin with!  I defy anyone to read the text of the U.S. Constitution and find any authority granted to the members of Congress to regulate health care.

This legislation also provides for access, by the appointees of the Obama administration, of all of your personal healthcare direct violation of the specific provisions of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution information, your personal financial information, and the information of your employer, physician, and hospital. All of this is a protection against unreasonable searches and seizures.  You can also forget about the right to privacy. That will have been legislated into oblivion regardless of what the 3rd and 4th Amendments may provide.

If you decide not to have healthcare insurance, or if you have private insurance that is not deemed acceptable to the Health Choices Administrator appointed by Obama, there will be a tax imposed on you.  It is called a tax instead of a fine because of the intent to avoid application of the due process clause of the 5th Amendment. However, that doesn't work because since there is nothing in the law that allows you to contest or appeal the imposition of the tax, it is definitely depriving someone of property without the due process of law.

So, there are three of those pesky amendments that the far left hate so much, out the original ten in the Bill of Rights, that are effectively nullified by this law  It doesn't stop there though.

The 9th Amendment that provides: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people;

The 10th Amendment states: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are preserved to the States respectively, or to the people. Under the provisions of this piece of Congressional handiwork neither the people nor the states are going to have any rights or powers at all in many areas that once were theirs to control.

I could write many more pages about this legislation, but I think you get the idea. This is not about health care; it is about seizing power and limiting rights. Article 6 of the Constitution requires the members of both houses of Congress to "be bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution." If I was a member of Congress I would not be able to vote for this legislation or anything like it, without feeling I was violating that sacred oath or affirmation.  If I voted for it anyway, I would hope the American people would hold me accountable.

For those who might doubt the nature of this threat, I suggest they consult the source, the US Constitution, and Bill of Rights. There you can see exactly what we are about to have taken from us.

Michael Connelly
Retired attorney,
Constitutional Law Instructor
Carrollton , Texas

Undermining The Law...

This Process is Undermining the Rule of Law

This week, NBC News and The Wall Street Journal released pollresults that are disturbing but by no means surprising. The March 11th - 14th poll of 1000 American adults showed thatonly 17% of respondents approve of the job Congress is doing in Washington. And as bad as that number is, the reason why Congress' approval rating is so low is even more disturbing: a full 76% of Americans simply do not trust the U.S. Congress. This was the lowest level of trust for any representative entity tested by NBC/WSJ.

It is no coincidence that these record low ratings come amid current debate over health care in Congress. Yesterday, former U.S. Attorneys General Edwin Meese III and William P. Barr released the following statement:

The convoluted and questionable method under discussion by both Houses of Congress for final passage of the long-debated health care legislation raises serious constitutional concerns, which, at best, will lead to protracted and wholly avoidable litigation and continued doubt about the bill’s validity. Members of Congress from both parties have criticized the use of such sleights of hand, andThe Washington Post has rightly editorializedagainst such “unseemly” and “dodgy” maneuvers for the health care bill. Beyond the obvious practical concerns shared by all citizens, the use of such obscure “rules” for final passage is even harder to justify in light of the real constitutional doubt and the erosion of public confidence in government that it will cause.


Contrary to what President Obama and some congressional leaders have been repeating of late, the American people do care passionately that the process for consideration of health care reform be both constitutional and fair. At a bare minimum, article I, sec. 7, cl. 2 of the U.S. Constitution requires that before it becomes law “(1) a bill containing its exact text was approved by a majority of the Members of the House of Representatives; (2) the Senate approved precisely the same text; and (3) that text was signed into law by the President.” Clinton v. City of New York, 524 U.S. 417, 448 (1998).


The “deem and pass” and similar options under consideration in the House of Representatives plainly violate at least the spirit of the Constitution’s bicameralism and presentment requirements. Those constitutional requirements were intended to ensure democratic transparency with a straightforward up-or-down vote in each House on all bills that become law. More importantly, these requirements were designed to ensure that the new national government actually followed “the consent of the governed,” which the Declaration of Independence had declared to the world was the only basis of legitimate government.


The “deem and pass” options under consideration in the House and the subsequent use of a “reconciliation” process that is reserved for budget issues in acts already signed into law further erode confidence in the rule of law. Some past uses of the “deem and pass” or “self-executing” rules raise similar concerns, but none was as convoluted as the proposed use, and significantly, there may have been no one with legal standing to challenge prior uses in court. Many individuals will have standing to challenge any health reform legislation that restructures one-sixth of the American economy, and the contemplated use of the “deem and pass” maneuver in this instance may be combined with questionable procedural steps in the Senate that render it much more subject to challenge.


There is no need to engage in such procedural machinations, and no asserted reason for doing so exists other than to avoid the traditional legislative safeguards in the Senate and to obscure the appearance that Members of the House actually voted for the Senate bill, which is a prerequisite for genuine reconciliation. The constitutional requirement of bicameralism should not be jettisoned under any circumstances—and certainly not for such trivial and partisan reasons.


Members of Congress take an oath to uphold the Constitution. Members should violate neither the letter nor spirit of the Constitution, especially when there is so much at stake, not only as a policy matter, but when the very legitimacy of the legislative process is in question. Given that many parts of the underlying legislation itself raise substantial constitutional concerns, these “unseemly” and “dodgy” procedures underscore the justified concern the American people have that their elected representatives are blatantly disregarding the Constitution, and as a result, undermining the rule of law.

Where Is Our Constitution?

From Maine to Hawaii, Americans send people to Washington, D.C., to be their representatives -- to cast votes that represent the will of the people who elected them to do the job.

But now, as the House of Representatives moves toward approving one of the most sweeping pieces of domestic legislation in U.S. history, critics are fuming that Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to usher through a health care bill . . . without a vote.

Pelosi, they say, is thumbing her nose at a cherished, basic principle of democracy for the sake of a legislative win. 

House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence is calling the plan, which several Democratic leaders are defending, "a betrayal of the commitment of every member of this Congress to the American people." 

And some say the move may not withstand a legal challenge. 

"It may be clever, but it is not constitutional," Michael McConnell, a former U.S. Appeals Court judge, wrote in a Wall Street Journal column. 

Even a Democratic senator, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, released a statement late Tuesday saying "any plan to approve major reform without actually voting for it simply won't fly outside the Beltway." 

But Pelosi and Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., chairwoman of the House Rules Committee, are considering a process to pass the Senate's health care bill without forcing rank-and-file Democrats to go on record by voting to support it. 

Here's how the process would work: 

Under a tactic known as a "self-executing rule," the House could simultaneously approve the Senate bill while voting on a package of changes to it. This would "deem" the Senate bill to be passed, without compelling members to vote for it directly. 

Democratic leaders are considering the option because many House Democrats don't want to cast a vote in favor of the unaltered Senate bill, which they oppose for numerous reasons. But the House must pass the Senate bill in order to move on to the package of changes intended to correct all the things about it that they don't like. 

The Slaughter solution allows members to temporarily accept the Senate version -- but keep it at arm's length -- before they proceed to change it.

Democrats have come out strongly in favor of the method, noting that it's not rare and Republicans have used it plenty of times before. Plus, they say, there will be a vote, even though it won't be for the Senate bill alone. 

"There is going to be a vote and it's going to be an up-or-down vote," Democratic National Committee Chairman Tim Kaine told Fox News. "Everybody's going to be up or down, on the record and be accountable either for a yes vote or for a no vote." 

But even though the option has been used before, its potential use on such a high-profile issue has some questioning its legality. 

McConnell wrote that the move would violate Article 1, Section 7 of the U.S. Constitution, which states that a bill becomes law when it "shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate" and the president signs it. 


"Passage of one bill cannot be deemed to be enactment of another," McConnell wrote. He also said that the move would violate the precedent stating that the House and Senate must pass identical versions of any bill -- since the House would approve a measure containing the Senate bill plus a package of changes, while the Senate would pass only the package of changes.

The 5000 Year Leap: A Must Read!

The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle That Changed the World

By W. Cleon Skousen [Learn more at Amazon.com]

From the Publisher

For many years in the United States there has been a gradual drifting away from the Founding Fathers original success formula. This has resulted in some of their most unique contributions for a free and prosperous society becoming lost or misunderstood. Therefore, there has been a need to review the history and development of the making of America in order to recapture the brilliant precepts which made Americans the first free people in modern times.

In this book, discover the 28 Principles of Freedom our Founding Fathers said must be understood and perpetuated by every people who desire peace, prosperity, and freedom. Learn how adherence to these beliefs during the past 200 years has brought about more progress than was made in the previous 5000 years. Published by National Center for Constitutional Studies, a non-profit organization.

About the Author

W. Cleon Skousen received his Juris Doctor degree from George Washington University Law School and was later admitted to practice law in the District of Columbia and before the District Court of Appeals and the United States Supreme Court. His professional background included 16 years with the FBI, four years as a chief of police and 10 years as a university professor. He was founder of the National Center for Constitutional Studies which originated in 1971. After the American election of 1980, Skousen was appointed to the Council for National Policy, a think tank of influential politicians, scholars and academics that lent support and advice to President Ronald Reagan’s administration.

FINALLY SOMEONE ASKED HIM THE QUESTION!

          

ON "ABC-TV"  - by Charlie  Gibson.
        

DURING THE "NETWORK SPECIAL ON HEALTH CARE".... OBAMA WAS ASKED:



        

"MR PRESIDENT WILL YOU AND YOUR FAMILY GIVE UP YOUR CURRENT HEALTH CARE  PROGRAM
 AND JOIN THE NEW 'UNIVERSAL  HEALTH CARE PROGRAM' THAT THE REST OF US  WILL 
BE ON ????"
  
          

THERE WAS A STONEY SILENCE AS OBAMA IGNORED THE QUESTION AND CHOSE NOT
 TO ANSWER IT!        

IN ADDITION, A NUMBER OF SENATORS WERE ASKED THE SAME QUESTION AND THEIR RESPONSE WAS..."WE WILL THINK ABOUT IT." 

         

AND THEY DID. IT WAS ANNOUNCED TODAY ON THE NEWS THAT THE "KENNEDY HEALTH CARE BILL" WAS WRITTEN INTO THE NEW HEALTH CARE REFORM INITIATIVE ENSURING THAT CONGRESS WILL BE 100% EXEMPT! 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

SO, THIS GREAT NEW HEALTH CARE PLAN THAT IS GOOD FOR YOU AND I... IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR OBAMA, HIS FAMILY OR  CONGRESS? 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Republic has a  CONSTITUTION?

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  

Amendment  28
 


Congress shall make no law that applies to the citizens of the United States that does not apply equally to the Senators or Representatives, and Congress shall make no law that applies to the Senators or Representatives that does not apply equally to the citizens of the United States

Social Security Another Tax and Money You May Never See Again.

Social Security to Start Cashing Uncle Sam's IOUs?

PARKERSBURG, W.Va. – The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.

It's time to start cashing them in.

For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.

Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.

Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg's municipal offices.

Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn't be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.

Social Security's shortfall will not affect current benefits. As long as the IOUs last, benefits will keep flowing. But experts say it is a warning sign that the program's finances are deteriorating. Social Security is projected to drain its trust funds by 2037 unless Congress acts, and there's concern that the looming crisis will lead to reduced benefits.

"This is not just a wake-up call, this is it. We're here," said Mary Johnson, a policy analyst with The Senior Citizens League, an advocacy group. "We are not going to be able to put it off any more."

For more than two decades, regardless of which political party was in power, Congress has been accused of raiding the Social Security trust funds to pay for other programs, masking the size of the budget deficit.

Remember Al Gore's "lockbox," the one he was going to use to protect Social Security? The former vice president talked about it so much during the 2000 presidential campaign that he was parodied on "Saturday Night Live."

Gore lost the election and never got his lockbox. But to illustrate the government's commitment to repaying Social Security, the Treasury Department has been issuing special bonds that earn interest for the retirement program. The bonds are unique because they are actually printed on paper, while other government bonds exist only in electronic form.

They are stored in a three-ring binder, locked in the bottom drawer of a white metal filing cabinet in the Parkersburg offices of Bureau of Public Debt. The agency, which is part of the Treasury Department, opened offices in Parkersburg in the 1950s as part of a plan to locate important government functions away from Washington, D.C., in case of an attack during the Cold War.

One bond is worth a little more than $15.1 billion and another is valued at just under $10.7 billion. In all, the agency has about $2.5 trillion in bonds, all backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. But don't bother trying to steal them; they're nonnegotiable, which means they are worthless on the open market.

More than 52 million people receive old age or disability benefits from Social Security. The average benefit for retirees is a little under $1,200 a month. Disabled workers get an average of $1,100 a month.

Social Security is financed by payroll taxes — employers and employees must each pay a 6.2 percent tax on workers' earnings up to $106,800. Retirees can start getting early, reduced benefits at age 62. They get full benefits if they wait until they turn 66. Those born after 1960 will have to wait until they turn 67.

Social Security's financial problems have been looming for years as the nation's 78 million baby boomers approached retirement age. The oldest are already there. As that huge group of people starts collecting benefits — and stops paying payroll taxes — Social Security's trust funds will shrink, running out of money by 2037, according to the latest projection from the trustees who oversee the program.

The recession is making things worse, at least in the short term. Tax receipts are down from the loss of more than 8 million jobs, and applications for early retirement benefits have spiked from older workers who were laid off and forced to retire.

Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary for the Social Security Administration, says the crisis has been years in the making. "If this helps get people to look more seriously at that in the nearer term, that's probably a good thing. But it's only really a punctuation mark on the fact that we have longer-term financial issues that need to be addressed."

In the short term, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that Social Security will continue to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes for the next three years. It is projected to post small surpluses of $6 billion each in 2014 and 2015, before returning to indefinite deficits in 2016.

For the budget year that ends in September, Social Security is projected to collect $677 million in taxes and spend $706 million on benefits and expenses.

Social Security will also collect about $120 billion in interest on the trust funds, according to the CBO projections, meaning its overall balance sheet will continue to grow. The interest, however, is paid by the government, adding even more to the budget deficit.

While Congress must shore up the program, action is unlikely this year, said Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D., who just took over last week as chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees Social Security.

"The issues required to address the long-term solvency needs of Social Security can be done in a careful, thoughtful and orderly way and they don't need to be done in the next few months," Pomeroy said.

The national debt — the amount of money the government owes its creditors — is about $12.5 trillion, or nearly $42,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. About $8 trillion has been borrowed in public debt markets, much of it from foreign creditors. The rest came from various government trust funds, including retirement funds for civil servants and the military. About $2.5 trillion is owed to Social Security.

Good luck to the politician who reneges on that debt, said Barbara Kennelly, a former Democratic congresswoman from Connecticut who is now president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

"Those bonds are protected by the full faith and credit of the United States of America," Kennelly said. "They're as solid as what we owe China and Japan."

AP

US Debt Clock...Click on the page below to see our current US debt!

Gun Control Reduces Crime?

In America we are guaranteed the "right" to own and carry a gun. No other country in the world that we are aware of permits its citizens this right, except Israel! How do citizens defend themselves against an out-of-control tyrannical government without guns? Gun control reduces crime? This is a fallacy and myth perpetrated by the anti-gun advocates and combinations that wish to exercise their control over people and reduce an individuals freedom.

"Portent" and "Machinations"

President Hinckley - 1988

“The time has come to get our house in order….there is a “portent” of stormy weather ahead to which we had better give heed.”

“PORTENT”

“an indication of something momentous about to happen which is threatening and dire. A signal of a coming calamity.”

President Monson – 2008

“Political “machinations” ruin the stability of nations…”

“MACHINATIONS”

“a scheming or crafty action or artful design intended to accomplish some usually evil end.”

ID Card for Workers

Lawmakers working to craft a new comprehensive immigration bill have settled on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would eventually be required to obtain.

Under the potentially controversial plan still taking shape in the Senate, all legal U.S. workers, including citizens and immigrants, would be issued an ID card with embedded information, such as fingerprints, to tie the card to the worker.

The ID card plan is one of several steps advocates of an immigration overhaul are taking to address concerns that have defeated similar bills in the past.

The uphill effort to pass a bill is being led by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) and Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), who plan to meet with President Barack Obama as soon as this week to update him on their work. An administration official said the White House had no position on the biometric card.

"It's the nub of solving the immigration dilemma politically speaking," Schumer said in an interview. The card, he said, would directly answer concerns that after legislation is signed, another wave of illegal immigrants would arrive. "If you say they can't get a job when they come here, you'll stop it."

The biggest objections to the biometric cards may come from privacy advocates, who fear they would become de facto national ID cards that enable the government to track citizens.

"It is fundamentally a massive invasion of people's privacy," said Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "We're not only talking about fingerprinting every American, treating ordinary Americans like criminals in order to work. We're also talking about a card that would quickly spread from work to voting to travel to pretty much every aspect of American life that requires identification."