AARP Wants Social Security Cuts Again?

From the Huffington Post, we have that AARP "will soon be holding a private, principals-only 'salon-style conversation' with a host of advocates of entitlement cuts." A petition opposing this outrage is at FireDogLake.com.

AARP meeting "off-the-record" with social security opponents to discuss strategies for changing Social Security, including possible benefit cuts? How ignorant and despicable!

The only change which should be made is to raise the cap at which payroll taxes are taken out (the cap should be indexed, not fixed), and that is only to insure full benefits past the next 25 years.

Raise the retirement age? You have got to be kidding. Social Security is fully funded for 25 years at current retirement ages. Will you penalize future retirees because of lies? And get rid of the payroll tax holiday and stop mixing our retirement insurance payments with general revenues.

If AARP want me as a future member, they had better start acting like advocates for seniors.

And get rid of AARP CEO Barry Rand along with whoever advises him. NOW!

Romney for President?

Crony capitalism, disaster capitalism, lies and super pacs. Now Romney wants to reduce capital gains from 15% to 0%, eliminate corporate taxes altogether, and reduce income taxes (the wealthy would be the prime beneficiaries). Romney says he can do this and still balance the budget without touching military spending, Social Security or Medicare. It is a snow job, pure and simple. Thirty years of reducing taxes on the rich, two unfunded wars, a Medicare prescription plan that pays pharmaceutical companies whatever they want (no negotiation), reduced revenues due to Bush's recession, and we are told that spending is the problem?

The rich pay a smaller percentage of their income than the middle class in federal taxes, and most of their income is exempt from payroll taxes. Yet we are told that the poor are taking money out of the rich man's pocket, even though it is clearly the rich who are taking from the rest of us.

We have effectively eliminated our borders and invited the 50 cents-an-hour workers of the world to take American jobs using unfair free trade agreements.

We force corporations to pay for health insurance for long term full-time employees, then blame taxes and regulations for difficulties in competing with companies in other countries that have universal health care. And those who make minimum wage or are not full-time employees need not apply for health insurance.

We are told that jobs are the number one priority, and watch while state after state tries to balance budgets by eliminating public sector jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, police, firefighters, maintenance and highway workers.

We are told Social Security needs fixing and privatizing, even though it is self-funded (except for the misguided tax holiday), has a $2.6 trillion surplus (increasing to at least $3.3 trillion dollars by 2020) to handle baby boomers retiring, and can pay full benefits for the next 25 years.

The firewall between investment banks and commercial banks was eliminated, and ten years later, exactly as predicted, the economy crashed. Republicans blame Democrats for the state of the economy, even though the crash happened during Bush's presidency.

The price of crude oil is set on the world markets, and speculation in oil future's markets has increased dramatically, yet we are told that somehow Obama is to blame for high gasoline prices. Those prices rise or fall world-wide, and the major difference in gasoline prices across the globe is due to taxes. The Keystone XL pipeline is touted as necessary, even though it will lead to only 50 permanent jobs, and any output will be sold abroad, not here in the U.S. And there is a reason that Canada does not want the pipeline to be built to their seaports. It is called the environment.

Conservatives are willing to take the United States to the brink of default in their stubborn insistance on not ending any tax cuts, but point to the national debt as the fault of spending instead of reduced revenues.

Conservatives are falling all over themselves proclaiming their godliness, while they implement socialism for the rich and diaster capitalism for the rest of us. They are leaving most of us to fend for ourselves in their version of social darwinism for the less well-off, preferring individual responsibility without social responsibility.

Oil Speculation

CNN's Jack Cafferty asks, "Should price controls be imposed on gasoline?"

My answer is that it is not just Wall Street that is the problem. Crude oil prices are determined on a “futures” market at the NYMEX or ICE (Intercontinental Exchange). Traders need only put down a small fraction of the price to control a larger amount of futures contracts (leverage). The oil futures market is now dominated by speculators (70% versus 30% a decade ago) who never intend to take delivery of any crude oil. Not only should speculators be required to put at least 50% down, but there should also be limits on the amount of oil that speculators could trade in the energy futures market. Time was that prices were determined by supply and demand. Trading futures and allowing speculation has added an expensive middleman which costs consumers (both here and worldwide) dearly.

See Sen. Bernie Sanders' post, "Crack Down on Oil Speculators".