Putin has proof of everything Trump, Musk, and Vance have given him, and now he is using it. He literally knows where the bodies are buried. AND he has the records of what he has paid to his operatives. He has a whole host of psychopaths, sadists, and murderers to pick from, many in our country.
What President Zelensky is wearing is his Battle Dress Uniform. It is usually drab green, but he had on dress black for them. It isn't surprising that cowards and sell-outs don't recognize a hero in uniform---someone who truly loves his country, his troops, and citizens.
I don't usually have to thank NATO nations, because we were always side-by-side, but today I send love and respect to the Europeans and Scandinavians.
They envy Zelensky. He is everything that they can never be a MAN the two clowns are being re-assessed by the whole world. Please leave the rest of us (the majority of citizens) in the US as anti-trumpers.
As an small business owner, I feel it is my duty NOT to pay in to my Social Security for tax year 2024. How long would it take them to come after someone like me, who makes less than 50,000 while Elon M. Pays nothing, Jeff Bezos pays nothing? Are you awake yet, Republican voters? Are you better off now than you were four years ago? If not, just wait. You haven't even begun to feel the effects of the destruction of our Country's governing system. How about how Trump, Vance, and Republican lawmakers sabotaged Zelensky in the Oval Office? A man who is trying to defend his Country from the brutal war criminal, Putin. Even as Putin continues to bomb Ukraine daily, targeting civilian infrastructure. Attempting to cause civilians to freeze to death. To blame Zelensky on this when Putin is the invader? Do you feel proud of these small, sniveling two faced liars that call themselves President and VP, using mobster tactics to attempt to bully Mr. Zelensky? Let them take YOUR money, let themove to Russia with YOU, go ahead and lick Putin's boots until your tongue falls off. I resent that people who think and vote like you are pulling the rest of us down the drain against our will
I understand your frustration that the previous commenter made about not paying into social security, but she is correct. There is no benefit to paying her fair share of taxes when she will not get any of her hard-earned money returned. So yes, I agree that this is a radical option. But necessary.
With cuts to the IRS, it will be a semi miracle if any tax returns get processed.
Itaxes are filed electronically and your refund or underpayment is processed electronically, so the only human involvement will come if your return is flagged for an audit, and with a reduced staff you might never be audited.
I'm 80. My generation, the Silent Generation, had 23 million members as of 2019. Every one of us is on Social Security, and most of us must have SS to survive, that includes my wife and I. We must also have Medicare to survive. Without it, we simply would not go to the doctor, and to quote a famous fictional character, 'deplete the excess population.'
I’m 86 and have been watching the Greedy Old Peckers peck away at Social Security since their whining tea party days. The thinning of the herd of costly old people is exactly the point. This is just more subtle than lining us up conveniently close to the edge of the trench.
What a nightmare that continues in the daytime. Trump like a little boy kneeling to his master putin’s instructions simply to destroy the American People. My broken heart 💔 over the treatment of Ukraine’s President yesterday while urgently asking for assistance for his beloved war torn country. 🇺🇦 What an embarrassment. We cannot give up our nation to this insanity.
2. Social Security. Yes, Thom. The agency staff was alraeady diminished. Lots of disinformation. In your comments as recently as yesterday, the "ponzi scheme" lie was spread by a MAGAT.
For most of us in pay status, our checks come automatically from trust funds, not from general tax revenues, that come from the budget, via an algorythm, usually about the 12th of the month. At present they are fully funded.
I worked for SS a couple of times, as an ALJ for 10 years, and was in several think tanks, via the agency, ABA, and ACUS. In 2005, GWB thought he had a mandate to privatize it. A lot of the lies and folklore were generated so speculators could get their hands on the $ 3 trillion.
IMHO the initial targets will be SSI. especially childs' benefits. SSI is NOT funded bt FICA tax and the funding does not come from the SSA trust funds. Virtually everyone on SSI is entitled to Medicare and Medicaid, based on income limits. At the same time that Musk et al are working to diminish SSI, they are doing worse with Medicaid.
I've been supporting a concept that because Congress has been negligent chatitable donations could possibly maintain the funds. If Social Security is sliding toward a "default" it is because Congress and a succession of presidents would sell their families for a few votes. The default of Trust Funds is supposed to apex in 2034 due to the increase of birth rates of baby boomers. After 2034, birth rates of later generations flatten and the funds can be solvent.
Social Security protects workers, widow(er)s, orphans and disabled people and is a major investment for many of us.
Please donate to create an endowment to slow down the rate. If everyone who donates to say, universities, which aren't really charities, the trust funds would be secure.
Why doesn't SSA advertise that donations can flatten the curve and extend the default date beyond 2034?
___________________________________________
Re SSI 1. . SSI, created in 1972 replaced state disability programs that were often inefficient, discriminatory and underfunded. As long as I can remember, Republicans threatened to return the disability program to the states. During the time that Jim Bunning was chair of the House Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee, this was policy.
I can testify that many of the committee staff had previously been employees of state agencies and recommended it. SSA uses a “sequential evaluation “ in disability claims and the first two steps are performed at the “State agency” level. https://www.ssa.gov/disability/determination.htm
2. Over time, Republicans argued that SSI should be subject to “new federalism,” a division of power between a National Government and State governments. In Title II SSA cases, the state agencies also evaluate disability claims, but the claims are paid by trust funds, not from the general budget funds. Some of the judges at SSA had been state disability judges. At first they were designated only to handle SSI cases.
3. The viability of returning the SSI cases to the states was agued within he Social Security subcommittee and at the Social Security Advisory Board.
“The Trump proposal would cut SSI by more than $8 billion over the next decade, shrinking benefits for roughly a quarter of a million children with disabilities by between 38 and 66 percent. It would also increase SSI’s administrative costs and improper payments”.
5. Libertarianism and the Pragmatic Case for a Universal Basic Income
6. Back to Milton Freidman, Universal basic income (UBI), a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive a minimum income in the form of an unconditional transfer payment, i.e., without a means test or need to work would substitute for SSI and other poverty programs.
State Flexibility for Supplemental Security Income SSI provides
cash payments to aged, blind, or disabled persons. SSI has also been expanded beyond its original purpose to include payments to the parents of disabled children. Under the current program, states have incentives to push families to enroll on SSI.143 Tragically, children who received SSI payments often become dependent on the program as adults. This budget gives more control of the program and its spending to states through block grants. This would allow all 50 states to experiment and better serve their citizens, such as through empowering those individuals to enjoy the dignity of work and service if they are able.
The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program provides cash assistance to people who are disabled, aged, or both and who have low income and few assets. In 2018, 15 percent of SSI recipients, or 1.2 million people, are projected to be disabled children under age 18, receiving an average monthly benefit of $686. To receive benefits, those children must have marked, severe functional limitations and usually must live in a household with low income and few assets.
In the Trump budget, taxes on SS are removed and no taxes on overtime and tips. This will accelerate a potential drop dead date for "default" of the retirement trust fund.
In the event of a default, benefits would be paid from current FICA collection, so it is estimated that only 83% would be paid in the first year.
You have it the Trust will disappear slowly be SSA checks will continue but probably 33% less. I would pay in there will be other presidents and stimulus checks. That’s the envy of the world, wait until grandma comes home, rethink it.
I have to do this in "honor" of all of the now absent readers who eternally kvetched about genocide Joe and how it was the US that was responsible for Putin's ethnic cleansing of Ukraine
Also a shout out to the Muslims and HAMAS lovers who voted for Trump or didn't vote and put Trump in the White House. I will never let you all forget it.
From Haaretz
Trump administration formally advanced more than $3 billion in weapons sales to Israel. The three individual sales include $2.04 billion in munitions; a separate $675.7 million sale including 1,000-pound bombs and JDAM kits; and a $295 million sale covering Caterpillar D9 bulldozers. It appears that the new sale, like the preceding one, was advanced without the approval of relevant Congressional committees.
Thom, Trump has a sinister plan in mind by appointing Kennedy, a known anti-vaxxers as head of the government's medical response to future pandemics. When he learned that Blacks and Hispanics had a higher mortality rate from covid, he mandated that they returned to work to help improve the staggering economy. He classified them as essential workers even though it posed a greater risk for the workers and their families. But this was alright for Trump and his son-in-law Jerold Kusner. It was their form of Ethic Cleansing.
The Trump Team also knew that Seniors were at greater risk from covid than any other group. His Executive Order to stop public schools from mandateding vacations will be dearly to this group as students will bring the disease home and spread it to their family. Trump and the Republican's 2025 Agenda is to cut Social Security and federally funded medical insurance. The more Seniors that dies from a pandemic makes it that much easier to give a greater tax cut to the ultra wealthy.
Besides Musk, Thiele, Soon-Shiong, Zuckerberg, Koch, Adelson, & Mellon, who are the other reactionary, libertarian billionaires that support the tearing down of our American Democracy? We must identify & shine a light on their names every day.
As a former protester against Vietnam war. We always went to Washinton in May for major protests. And Nixon at the time scooped up 3-4 thousand of us and locked us in local prisons than as numbers grew we were all put into the DC Coliseum. Word on the street got out that we were being detained held without any charges. Pressure built on Nixon, and by the way probably 1/4 were not even there as protestors. and Nixon finally let us out after three days and as lucky fortune had it many people and businesses outside made sure provided food for all of us.
I cannot see anyway around what is happening with our so called administration rightly called of injustice. We'll need again to organize on a greater scale than May day demonstrations. Probably as great if not greater than the Poor Peoples March with Martin L k. We'll need a million + folks to inhabit DC. and keep them there with demands that need to be met. We'll need support from x military and desenters that want no part of king T and his merry band of fascist ass-kissers. We're already have protests going on all over the country. I think that we need to organize it and take it to DC ASAP. We do not have any time to waste. The Longer T remains the more difficult the task to dislodge this administration of cruilty and injustice.
Well, I see this all looking like we have to do something to maintain our democracy. Is there still time left. Tune in. Wait for it. Thanks Thom. I didn’t vote for this.
It's becoming painfully obvious. There is no limit to how much money is too much. Is it too much to ask that the current income cap on social security be raised? Would anyone earning more than $250,000/yr be able to live on $235,000?
It is simple.
Putin has proof of everything Trump, Musk, and Vance have given him, and now he is using it. He literally knows where the bodies are buried. AND he has the records of what he has paid to his operatives. He has a whole host of psychopaths, sadists, and murderers to pick from, many in our country.
What President Zelensky is wearing is his Battle Dress Uniform. It is usually drab green, but he had on dress black for them. It isn't surprising that cowards and sell-outs don't recognize a hero in uniform---someone who truly loves his country, his troops, and citizens.
I don't usually have to thank NATO nations, because we were always side-by-side, but today I send love and respect to the Europeans and Scandinavians.
Slava Ukraini!
They envy Zelensky. He is everything that they can never be a MAN the two clowns are being re-assessed by the whole world. Please leave the rest of us (the majority of citizens) in the US as anti-trumpers.
https://jerryweiss.substack.com/
As an small business owner, I feel it is my duty NOT to pay in to my Social Security for tax year 2024. How long would it take them to come after someone like me, who makes less than 50,000 while Elon M. Pays nothing, Jeff Bezos pays nothing? Are you awake yet, Republican voters? Are you better off now than you were four years ago? If not, just wait. You haven't even begun to feel the effects of the destruction of our Country's governing system. How about how Trump, Vance, and Republican lawmakers sabotaged Zelensky in the Oval Office? A man who is trying to defend his Country from the brutal war criminal, Putin. Even as Putin continues to bomb Ukraine daily, targeting civilian infrastructure. Attempting to cause civilians to freeze to death. To blame Zelensky on this when Putin is the invader? Do you feel proud of these small, sniveling two faced liars that call themselves President and VP, using mobster tactics to attempt to bully Mr. Zelensky? Let them take YOUR money, let themove to Russia with YOU, go ahead and lick Putin's boots until your tongue falls off. I resent that people who think and vote like you are pulling the rest of us down the drain against our will
By doing that, you screw the rest of us who rely on the trust funds.
I understand your frustration that the previous commenter made about not paying into social security, but she is correct. There is no benefit to paying her fair share of taxes when she will not get any of her hard-earned money returned. So yes, I agree that this is a radical option. But necessary.
That's baloney. False prtemise. Even in "derfault" reduced retirement benefits will be avaiable.
Meanwhile she and her family may forefit the equivalent of a million dollar disability policy.
Plus, criminal exposure.
With cuts to the IRS, it will be a semi miracle if any tax returns get processed.
Itaxes are filed electronically and your refund or underpayment is processed electronically, so the only human involvement will come if your return is flagged for an audit, and with a reduced staff you might never be audited.
we need to have a massive resistance in everyway possible. I could barely sleep with the horrifying bully WH scene playing over in my mind.
I'm 80. My generation, the Silent Generation, had 23 million members as of 2019. Every one of us is on Social Security, and most of us must have SS to survive, that includes my wife and I. We must also have Medicare to survive. Without it, we simply would not go to the doctor, and to quote a famous fictional character, 'deplete the excess population.'
I’m 86 and have been watching the Greedy Old Peckers peck away at Social Security since their whining tea party days. The thinning of the herd of costly old people is exactly the point. This is just more subtle than lining us up conveniently close to the edge of the trench.
That's the plan.
'Let him die': Trump's nephew shares what he says Trump told him when he asked for help with his son
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmHgSQbOH6I
What a nightmare that continues in the daytime. Trump like a little boy kneeling to his master putin’s instructions simply to destroy the American People. My broken heart 💔 over the treatment of Ukraine’s President yesterday while urgently asking for assistance for his beloved war torn country. 🇺🇦 What an embarrassment. We cannot give up our nation to this insanity.
1. Pressure Congressional Republicans who support Ukraine. https://jerryweiss.substack.com/
2. Social Security. Yes, Thom. The agency staff was alraeady diminished. Lots of disinformation. In your comments as recently as yesterday, the "ponzi scheme" lie was spread by a MAGAT.
For most of us in pay status, our checks come automatically from trust funds, not from general tax revenues, that come from the budget, via an algorythm, usually about the 12th of the month. At present they are fully funded.
I worked for SS a couple of times, as an ALJ for 10 years, and was in several think tanks, via the agency, ABA, and ACUS. In 2005, GWB thought he had a mandate to privatize it. A lot of the lies and folklore were generated so speculators could get their hands on the $ 3 trillion.
IMHO the initial targets will be SSI. especially childs' benefits. SSI is NOT funded bt FICA tax and the funding does not come from the SSA trust funds. Virtually everyone on SSI is entitled to Medicare and Medicaid, based on income limits. At the same time that Musk et al are working to diminish SSI, they are doing worse with Medicaid.
I've been supporting a concept that because Congress has been negligent chatitable donations could possibly maintain the funds. If Social Security is sliding toward a "default" it is because Congress and a succession of presidents would sell their families for a few votes. The default of Trust Funds is supposed to apex in 2034 due to the increase of birth rates of baby boomers. After 2034, birth rates of later generations flatten and the funds can be solvent.
Social Security protects workers, widow(er)s, orphans and disabled people and is a major investment for many of us.
Please donate to create an endowment to slow down the rate. If everyone who donates to say, universities, which aren't really charities, the trust funds would be secure.
https://www.ssa.gov/agency/donations.html
Why doesn't SSA advertise that donations can flatten the curve and extend the default date beyond 2034?
___________________________________________
Re SSI 1. . SSI, created in 1972 replaced state disability programs that were often inefficient, discriminatory and underfunded. As long as I can remember, Republicans threatened to return the disability program to the states. During the time that Jim Bunning was chair of the House Ways and Means Social Security subcommittee, this was policy.
I can testify that many of the committee staff had previously been employees of state agencies and recommended it. SSA uses a “sequential evaluation “ in disability claims and the first two steps are performed at the “State agency” level. https://www.ssa.gov/disability/determination.htm
2. Over time, Republicans argued that SSI should be subject to “new federalism,” a division of power between a National Government and State governments. In Title II SSA cases, the state agencies also evaluate disability claims, but the claims are paid by trust funds, not from the general budget funds. Some of the judges at SSA had been state disability judges. At first they were designated only to handle SSI cases.
3. The viability of returning the SSI cases to the states was agued within he Social Security subcommittee and at the Social Security Advisory Board.
4. As president, Trump tried and failed to cut benefits drastically. Some Republicans wanted to replace the entire system. See. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Trump, House Republican Cuts to SSI Would Harm Children With Disabilities, Sept. 18, 2017, Kathleen Romig and Guillermo Herrera. https://www.cbpp.org/research/social-security/trump-house-republican-cuts-to-ssi-would-harm-children-with-disabilities
“The Trump proposal would cut SSI by more than $8 billion over the next decade, shrinking benefits for roughly a quarter of a million children with disabilities by between 38 and 66 percent. It would also increase SSI’s administrative costs and improper payments”.
5. Libertarianism and the Pragmatic Case for a Universal Basic Income
Ed Dolan • August 27, 2014 • https://www.cato-unbound.org/2014/08/27/ed-dolan/libertarianism-pragmatic-case-universal-basic-income/
This is a symposium.
6. Back to Milton Freidman, Universal basic income (UBI), a social welfare proposal in which all citizens of a given population regularly receive a minimum income in the form of an unconditional transfer payment, i.e., without a means test or need to work would substitute for SSI and other poverty programs.
https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/5-31-16bud.pdf
7. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities · by B Greenstein, Universal Basic Income May Sound Attractive But, If It Occurred, Would Likelier Increase Poverty Than Reduce It, https://www.cbpp.org/sites/default/files/atoms/files/5-31-16bud.pdf
8. RSC 2003 Budget proposal: Blueprint to Save America, p. 35. https://banks.house.gov/uploadedfiles/fy23_budget_final_copy.pdf
State Flexibility for Supplemental Security Income SSI provides
cash payments to aged, blind, or disabled persons. SSI has also been expanded beyond its original purpose to include payments to the parents of disabled children. Under the current program, states have incentives to push families to enroll on SSI.143 Tragically, children who received SSI payments often become dependent on the program as adults. This budget gives more control of the program and its spending to states through block grants. This would allow all 50 states to experiment and better serve their citizens, such as through empowering those individuals to enjoy the dignity of work and service if they are able.
9. CBO Eliminate Supplemental Security Income Benefits for Disabled Children. https://www.cbo.gov/budget-options/54742 (2018)
Background
The Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program provides cash assistance to people who are disabled, aged, or both and who have low income and few assets. In 2018, 15 percent of SSI recipients, or 1.2 million people, are projected to be disabled children under age 18, receiving an average monthly benefit of $686. To receive benefits, those children must have marked, severe functional limitations and usually must live in a household with low income and few assets.
A little more on Social Security.
In the Trump budget, taxes on SS are removed and no taxes on overtime and tips. This will accelerate a potential drop dead date for "default" of the retirement trust fund.
In the event of a default, benefits would be paid from current FICA collection, so it is estimated that only 83% would be paid in the first year.
You have it the Trust will disappear slowly be SSA checks will continue but probably 33% less. I would pay in there will be other presidents and stimulus checks. That’s the envy of the world, wait until grandma comes home, rethink it.
I have to do this in "honor" of all of the now absent readers who eternally kvetched about genocide Joe and how it was the US that was responsible for Putin's ethnic cleansing of Ukraine
Also a shout out to the Muslims and HAMAS lovers who voted for Trump or didn't vote and put Trump in the White House. I will never let you all forget it.
From Haaretz
Trump administration formally advanced more than $3 billion in weapons sales to Israel. The three individual sales include $2.04 billion in munitions; a separate $675.7 million sale including 1,000-pound bombs and JDAM kits; and a $295 million sale covering Caterpillar D9 bulldozers. It appears that the new sale, like the preceding one, was advanced without the approval of relevant Congressional committees.
Thom, Trump has a sinister plan in mind by appointing Kennedy, a known anti-vaxxers as head of the government's medical response to future pandemics. When he learned that Blacks and Hispanics had a higher mortality rate from covid, he mandated that they returned to work to help improve the staggering economy. He classified them as essential workers even though it posed a greater risk for the workers and their families. But this was alright for Trump and his son-in-law Jerold Kusner. It was their form of Ethic Cleansing.
The Trump Team also knew that Seniors were at greater risk from covid than any other group. His Executive Order to stop public schools from mandateding vacations will be dearly to this group as students will bring the disease home and spread it to their family. Trump and the Republican's 2025 Agenda is to cut Social Security and federally funded medical insurance. The more Seniors that dies from a pandemic makes it that much easier to give a greater tax cut to the ultra wealthy.
If you live in a Red state, register as a Republican that you don't get purged.
Besides Musk, Thiele, Soon-Shiong, Zuckerberg, Koch, Adelson, & Mellon, who are the other reactionary, libertarian billionaires that support the tearing down of our American Democracy? We must identify & shine a light on their names every day.
As a former protester against Vietnam war. We always went to Washinton in May for major protests. And Nixon at the time scooped up 3-4 thousand of us and locked us in local prisons than as numbers grew we were all put into the DC Coliseum. Word on the street got out that we were being detained held without any charges. Pressure built on Nixon, and by the way probably 1/4 were not even there as protestors. and Nixon finally let us out after three days and as lucky fortune had it many people and businesses outside made sure provided food for all of us.
I cannot see anyway around what is happening with our so called administration rightly called of injustice. We'll need again to organize on a greater scale than May day demonstrations. Probably as great if not greater than the Poor Peoples March with Martin L k. We'll need a million + folks to inhabit DC. and keep them there with demands that need to be met. We'll need support from x military and desenters that want no part of king T and his merry band of fascist ass-kissers. We're already have protests going on all over the country. I think that we need to organize it and take it to DC ASAP. We do not have any time to waste. The Longer T remains the more difficult the task to dislodge this administration of cruilty and injustice.
Thom what do you think, some suggestions?
As my dear departed friend Jackiesue would say, "We are f%cked."
Well, I see this all looking like we have to do something to maintain our democracy. Is there still time left. Tune in. Wait for it. Thanks Thom. I didn’t vote for this.
I have seen enough of the White House gas lighting. The smoke and mirrors from Musk is bad enough. The lack of civil manner when hosting a head of state was despicable conduct. Felons generally do better. https://hotbuttons.substack.com/p/lauding-ukrainian-statemanship?r=3m1bs
The Hartman Report is always enlightening,as well as chillingly forecasting how very bad things are yet to come. The end has just begun.
It's becoming painfully obvious. There is no limit to how much money is too much. Is it too much to ask that the current income cap on social security be raised? Would anyone earning more than $250,000/yr be able to live on $235,000?