- by John LaeschMr. President where is your legislative proposal to increase and strengthen Social Security?As the National Democratic Party Attempts to steer their corporate candidate into the white house, they are now openly wooing progressive voters with empty rhetoric. The first salvo of false promises comes from the sitting president.
Gas money hereObama came close to sealing a Grand Bargain with Boehner that would have made significant cuts to Social Security and Medicare, my raising age eligibilities and by slowing cost of living allowances. It wasn't harsh enough for the Tea Party so most conservative Republicans voted against it and it failed.
Over the weekend, the NY Times speculated that the "early optimism" in the Clinton camp for an easy landslide win against a Trump campaign weighed down with so much baggage "is evaporating." The hopeless party hacks and mercenary lobbyists who control her dull, utterly conventional campaign have no idea how to fight Trump.
As the Republican Party has, over the past 3 decades moved further and further right, a certain kind of conservative Democrat unenamored of a progressive world view, has moved in into to fill the void on the center-right that the GOP has abandoned for their more and more commonplace, Hate Talk Radio-driven extremism.
Most Americans have probably never heard of the 1960 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Flemming v. Nestor. It is one of several important facts about Social Security that are unknown to the public. The essence of the ruling is that nobody has an “earned right” to Social Security benefits, no matter how much money they have paid into the program.
Donna Edwards is giving up a safe congressional seat in a deep blue district (MD-04) in Prince George's County, where Obama won in 2012 with 78%, to run for the open Senate seat of one of her mentors, Barbara Mikulski. Last year Donna won her own reelection bid with 70%, the best of any incumbent in Maryland.
The surplus Social Security revenue, generated by the 1983 payroll tax hike, was supposed to be saved and invested in marketable U.S. Treasury bonds. If that had been done, the trust fund would today hold $2.8 trillion in “good-as-gold” marketable U.S. Treasury bonds. But, none of the surplus Social Security revenue was saved or invested in anything. Instead, all of the money was deposited directly into the general fund and used for such things as wars, tax cuts, and other government programs.
The unwritten but very real and clearly understood social contract under which the citizens and workers of the United States and Canada developed the countries has now been broken by the wealthy classes, the owners of major industries and businesses and the politicians, The contract is now invalid. A new social contract is needed.
