OBOF TYMHM & MORE PART 14-08

WELCOME TO OPINIONS  BASED  ON FACTS (OBOF)

&

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (TYMHM)

YEAR ONE

YEAR TWO

YEAR THREE

YEAR FOUR

 

OBOF YEAR FOUR INDEX
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-01	Jan. 02, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-02	Jan. 09, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-03	Jan. 15, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-04	Jan. 24, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-05	JAN 30, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-06	Feb. 06, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-06 EXTRA	Feb. 09, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-07	Feb. 13, 2014
OBOF TYMHM PART 14-08	Feb. 21, 2014

 

Agenda

 

1.  Note from Floyd.

2.  Which election is most important - 2014 or 2016?

3.  Social Security bounces in debate.

4.  Cost of wars.

 

 

 

 

 

NOTE  FROM  FLOYD

I believe this is the latest I have ever been getting this posting to you.  Not that it matters to you, but I have gone a long, long time without falling.  That ended this week and I have been a little behind ever sense.

 

Even though this is late I think you will find it quite interesting.  Here's to good reading.

~~~

Which is more important, the 2014 elections, or the

 2016 elections?

By Floyd

 

The 2014 elections, particularly in the Senate, is by far the most important, WHY?  Think about it, but before you do, let me give you some "food for thought."

 

If Republicans win the Senate in 2014, what  will it mean for our nation?  There are three Supreme Court Judges that, quite possibly, may retire in the next two years.  Two of them are 77 and one is 80.  There has not been any indication from any of the three that they are planning to retire and I am quite sure they will not give any indication prior to the 2014 elections.

 

The three are: 

 

Antonin Scalia, 77, born 3-11-36 and appointed to the court by President Reagan in1986.

 

Anthony Kennedy, 77, born 7-23-36 and appointed to the court by President Reagan in 1988.

 

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 80, born 3-15-33 and appointed to the court by President Clinton in 1993.   

 

If any or all of the three should retire in the next two years and if the Republicans take over the senate, it is a certainty that no matter who President Obama nominates for replacement, they will not only not be confirmed, they won't even be voted on.  It would be a dead issue. 

 

Now, what would that mean for the 2016 election?  Just suppose that Hillary is elected President.  It would mean exactly the same thing for her as for President Obama.  If the Republicans take over the Senate in 2014, you can bet your last dollar that they will do the same in 2016, and President Hillary Clinton would not be able to get anything done for the country for four years and then it is quite feasible to think that the Republicans could take over the White House in 2020.

 

NOW, IF THAT DOESN'T SCARE YOU, YOU ARE A REPUBLICAN.  After three plus years writing to you, I am pretty sure that any of you who are still reading, are Democrats, because if you were a Republican you would have stopped reading my jabbering a long time ago.         

 

NOW, I can't believe THE NEXT BIG THING THAT SHOULD SCARE YOU.  Tonight, Tuesday the 18th of February, Lawrence O'Donnell, who heads up the show "The Last Word" on MSNBC, reported that the largest Democratic financial contributor, "Priority USA", and the equivalent of the Koch Brothers for the Republicans,  has said that they are not going to fund very much for the 2014 election and are going to go all out for the 2016.  NOW, I ASK YOU, WHAT KIND OF SENSE DOES THAT MAKE?  THEY JUST AS WELL SAVE ALL THEIR MONEY FOR BOTH ELECTIONS AS THE 2016 ELECTION IS ALREADY DECIDED IF WE WRITE OFF THE 2014 ELECTION.

~~~

Social Security Bounces in Debate

Peter McDermott

New America Media / News Report

Published: Sunday 16 February 2014

 

From its passage in 1935, Social Security was to be one leg

of the retirement income stool, along with savings and private pensions. Both of those legs, though, have fallen short for most older Americans.

 

 

Prof. Eric Kingson asked in class recently, “Has anyone in this room ever received Social Security benefits?”

He raised his hand because his father died when he was young. But he intended it, in part, as a rhetorical question, to which his answer was: “Every one of you has received something from Social Security from the day you were born.”  The teacher of social work at Syracuse University said that each had gotten the gift of insurance.

“People largely take it for granted,” said Kingson, a cofounder and director of the advocacy group Social Security Works.  “We assume it’s there. It’s seamless.  It’s like the court systems, the highway systems. It functions.  You can’t really imagine life without it.” 
But some have imagined and plotted a future without it, often with well-funded campaigns to cut the program.

Kingson said that in recent times, however, the supporters of the government-run insurance system have seen the debate tilt in their favor.

Shifting Debate

“You go back four
 years, three years and
 the policy discussion
 on Social Security was: Do we cut it a lot, do we eviscerate it in the name of 'strengthening' it or do we just cut it a little?  Those were the only two frames that were out there,” he said.

“The polarity has really shifted.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Though there is a momentum still for those who want to see some sort of a cut, the discussion now is much more about expanding benefits,” Kingson said.

“A funny thing happened on the way to the chained-CPI,” he said, referring to the plan to substitute a new way of adjusting Social Security’s annual cost of living increase for inflation.

“It was a Republican idea, but the [Obama] Administration proposed it as a way to gain Republican support for tax increases,” Kingson said.

 “The press over time has picked up that it isn’t just a technical change.  It’s a way to cut benefits,” he added.  “I think that realization has sunk in.

“Many Democrats came out against some proposals, one of them being the chained-CPI,” he added.  And the reasons for the shift in the debate over time?  “Persistence and knowledge,” he said.  Experts like Kingson have had to counter well-funded efforts that argue for drastic cuts to Social Security, as well as to Medicare and Medicaid.  Billionaire and former Nixon cabinet member Peter G. Peterson alone has spent in excess of $400 million in an attempt to link these programs to the issue of the national debt.

Such campaigns have had the greatest impact on media pundits and politicians from both parties in Washington, but not so much, if at all, among voters, in Kingson’s view. 

A poll in mid-November taken in 10 states that will face competitive Senate races showed that up to three-quarters of voters said they would punish any candidate who voted for cuts in Social Security, while two-thirds supported an increase in benefits.

Fighting Bad Proposals

“All of the emphasis has been on fighting bad proposals” from both parties and the Administration, said Kingson, “but we’re at the cusp in a change of the politics.”

Social Security Works sponsored a conference at the end of October in the Hart Senate Office Building about the use of Social Security to address the retirement-income crisis.  It was attended by several leading members of Congress, some of who have developed proposals for extending the almost 80- year-old program in key ways.

“Many Americans aren’t going to be positioned to maintain anything near their standard of living when they get old.  And the reality that the one system that provides the solution is Social Security,” Kingson said, which is only “a partial solution.”  From its passage in 1935, Social Security was to be one leg of the retirement income stool, along with savings and private pensions.  Both of those legs, though, have fallen short for most older Americans.

Social Security Works frames its detailed policy positions against the backdrop of the “extraordinary” growth in income inequality over the last three decades or so. 

“Who are the big winners in terms of the tax giveaways in the past 10 or 14 years,” its cofounder asked?

As the policy advisor to two presidential commissions on Social Security--one during the Reagan era, in 1982-3, and the other in 1994 under the Clinton presidency--Kingson has long been familiar with the various “red herrings” used in the debate.

One tactic has been to pit younger adults against older age groups.  These days, it’s suggested that the baby boomers will use up resources that should be put aside for future generations.  Thirty years ago, the refrain was that those then entering the retired population were stealing from the baby boomers.

None of it makes sense, according to Kingson “It’s disingenuous politics,” he said.

Setting the record straight, by Floyd.

Lets be completely factual and straight about this stealing matter.  During the Reagan Administration in 1983, there were changes made in SS to handle the increase need to pay benefits to the baby boomers.  Up until that time, the FICA (Federal Insurance Collection Account) was paid to provide benefits for the previous generation.  The FICA rate was increase considerably, so that the baby boomer generation paid, not only for the previous generation, but also, for their own generation.

It was determined that this increase would provide a trust fund of $2.7 trillion by the time baby boomers began to retire.  The plan was a good one, except for one thing. 

Every President and Congress, beginning with Reagan himself, have taken the surplus that was suppose to be in the trust fund and spent it.  Stealing it is a more accurate word.  They have spent it on other programs and wars.  There is a big argument now as to the value of the government bonds that were placed in the trust fund when money was taken out.  I won't get into that here as it would simply be too long. 

However, from what I know, I don't believe the bonds have any monetary value.  The only value they have is the supposedly good faith of the U. S. Government to repay the money the bonds represent.  It is an accounting method only.  Given our economic situation today, I don't know how the Government can pay back $2.7 trillion to the trust fund.  There would be no SS problem today at all, if that money had not been stolen, embezzled, or whatever you want to call it.

The income from FICA today does not meet the benefits paid out and the Government has to make up the difference.  To me, that simply is a very, very small pay back towards the $2.7 trillion.

 Human Dignity

The professor has described Social Security as a “uniquely American institution.”  Comparing it to another feature of national life, the native New Yorker said, “When you have a pothole, you don’t say: ‘Rip up the interstate high- way system!’”

He wrote recently with his Social Security Works cofounder Nancy Altman, a former legislative aide to former Republican Senator John C. Danforth, “As powerful and effective as private enterprise is, there are certain tasks that are performed better collectively and cooperatively through government.  One of those tasks is the economic security provided by Social Security when wages are lost as the result of disability, death, or old age.”

For Kingson, who previously taught at Boston College, one aspect of Jesuit theology gets to the heart of the issue: “This notion that human dignity is very important, that we are on this Earth and we have an obligation to each other and maintaining dignity is critical.  “It’s a difficult sell in a Madison Avenue world. We’re such a cynical society.  The ’80s invited us to be very selfish and to really not think about others,” he added.

Still, there have been signs of a tectonic shift, he noted, Pope Francis I being one of them.“I found myself in class the other day saying ‘our pope,’” said Kingson, who is Jewish. “Many of us have taken ownership of this seemingly spiritual human being. The man seems to live what he believes. And he’s also communicating it.  That’s good. That’s an unambiguous good.”

On social justice issues, the Syracuse professor can switch with ease to the political and the national.  The attack on Social Security, he said, is part of the “assault on government and on the idea of the commonweal. I think it’s dangerous.”

Kingson continued, “Some things hold us together as families, as society.  This is one of the institutions. It’s critical in holding the nation together,” Kingson said, “enabling people to help themselves, but also expressing the best parts of this country.”

~~~

Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq

 to Cost U.S. Over $4 Trillion

Pierce Nahigyan

NationofChange / News Report

Published: Tuesday 18 February 2014

 

 

In March 2013, the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government issued a report on the costs of America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presently, these conflicts, which America has been fighting for over a decade, have totaled approximately $2 trillion in war debt.

This figure includes direct outlays for America’s three main military operations: 

·                 Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) - The official name for America’s war in Afghanistan.

·                 Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) - The official name for America’s war in Iraq (which some may remember by its original title: Operation Iraqi Liberation, or OIL).

·                 Operation New Dawn (OND) - The official title for America’s war in Iraq under President Obama’s command (2010 to present).

These operations were implemented under the umbrella of America’s Global War on Terror.  In 2006, President George W. Bush would tell CNBC that the war on terror was nothing less than “the first counter-attack to World War III.” 

 

That counter-attack, or World War III, continues through the present day, twelve years after the first and only attack on America’s home soil since the turn of the century.  In that time, America has financed its $2 trillion war mainly by borrowing from foreign lenders. It has in fact only paid $260 billion of that so far, which is merely the interest accrued on our debt. 

 

Yet the ultimate costs of America’s wars in the Middle East will accumulate long after they have officially ended.  Medical care and disability benefits will be due to their veterans for a generation to come, damaged equipment will need to be replaced, and Obama has promised to build a “Strategic Partnership” with Afghanistan.  This will likely include American management of its police and military forces. 

All told, Harvard calculates that the price tag for these conflicts will double and potentially triple.  That means $4 trillion at its most conservative and $6 trillion at its highest.

Putting This in Perspective: Past Wars

When we approach these numbers, their sheer size makes them difficult to comprehend.  The best way to illustrate America’s vast military expenditures is by comparing its present to its former wars.

In the fiscal year 2011, the Iraq and Afghan wars had cost the U.S. $1.15 trillion.  At the time, only World War II had been more expensive, totaling $4.10 trillion in expenditures (adjusted for inflation). Comparatively, Vietnam totaled $738 billion and the first Gulf War $102 billion. 

The Iraq and Afghan wars have also been fought by one of the smallest militaries in American history.  Over 16 million people served in theaters of war or in support roles during World War II. Vietnam and Korea had over 8 million and 5 million in active service respectively.  The first Gulf War had 2.2 million people in active service.

America’s current wars are served by about 2.1 million people. Nevertheless, the protracted length of the wars, combined with the breakdown and transport of military equipment in harsh desert environments, have contributed to higher costs.  On the personnel side, the Harvard report states that military pay and benefits have increased since 2004 to counter declining recruitment in the face of the war’s rising casualties.

Putting This in Perspective: Total Budget vs. the World

The United States treasury divides annual spending into three groups: Mandatory, Discretionary and Interest on Debt.  Interest paid on the federal debt comprises about 6 percent of the annual budget.  Mandatory Spending (about 64 percent of the budget) includes earned-benefit programs such as SNAP (i.e. food stamps) and Social Security.  This spending is determined by eligibility and cannot be altered by Congress. On the other hand, Discretionary Spending (about 30 percent of the budget) is decided by Congress directly.

For the fiscal year 2014, President Obama has allotted 57 percent of the $1.15 trillion Discretionary Spending budget to go towards the military. Six percent is allotted for Veterans’ Benefits, 6 percent for Education, 3 percent to International Affairs and so on in progressively smaller pieces of the pie. 

Though the military receives over half of the United States’ Discretionary Spending budget, it in no way covers the ballooning costs of its current wars.  This despite the fact that defense spending in general has ballooned continuously since September 11 (though in reality America’s defense budget has been incrementally increasing since the start of the Cold War). America’s Defense budget grew from $287 billion in 2001 to $645.7 billion in 2013. 

 

These fractions of America’s discretionary spending dwarf the total national budgets of both Afghanistan and Iraq, though the combatants American troops are facing in these countries are largely insurgent forces with even less capital to spend on weapons and soldiers. These are America’s only nominal “enemies,” and yet America’s defense budget continues to grow.

 

In 2012 the United States spent more on defense than the next ten highest defense budgets combined.  That’s more than China, Russia, the UK, Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, India, Germany, Italy and Brazil. 

Putting This in Perspective: What We’re Paying For

When Donald Rumsfeld was serving as the Secretary of Defense for the Bush administration, he said that the military would be in and out of Iraq in four months.  He told the press, “I don’t do quagmires.”

 

Bush’s Senior Economic Advisor, Lawrence Lindsey, told the Wall Street Journal that the war would cost no more than $200 billion.  Both he and Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill were forced to resign in 2002. According to Republican Strategist Scott Reed, “They didn’t send a message that we knew where we were going, we knew what we were doing.” 

Years after the fact, many Americans still don’t know why we entered Iraq or what we are still doing there.  We will be paying for this confusion for decades, a debt compounded by a series of poor choices by the federal government.  Tax cuts for the wealthy, overseen by the Bush administration, stripped revenue from the federal budget; to fund the war, over thirty emergency bills were passed in the last decade to override its regular spending caps; and 2 million Iraqi refugees are stranded in Syria and now embroiled in its civil war.  Will the United States return them to their liberated nation?

Only compounding this debt is the staggering price paid by and for the men and women who have fought in these wars.  About 1.56 million American soldiers are currently receiving medical treatment, over fifty percent of all Iraq and Afghan veterans. One-third of them suffer from mental health issues, including depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, and many will for the rest of their lives.  Harvard estimates that these disability benefits will add up to $836 billion in the coming decades. 

And yet every tank, round of munition, boot on the ground, drone, vehicle and death fails to justify two wars fought for too long with too much borrowed money.

There is no way to fix this problem.  All we can do is pay for it.

NationofChange fights back with one simple but powerful weapon: the truth. Can you donate $5 to help us?

 

ABOUT Pierce Nahigyan

Pierce Nahigyan is a staff writer for Nation of Change.  He resides in southern California and holds a B.A. in Sociology and History from Northwestern University.

~~~

If, the good Lord is willing and the creek don't rise, I'll talk with you again next week, hopefully Wednesday or Thursday, February 26 or 27.

God Bless You All

&

God Bless the United States of America

Floyd