SENIORS, VETS UNITE / OBAMA IS PUSHING US OVER THE CLIFF

Seniors and vets, it's happening before our very eyes ~ President Obama, not Paul Ryan, is pushing our highly dependable Social Security benefits program over the cliff while playing politics with the Republicans and over the wishes of 87% of those over 50 years of age who oppose any cuts to social security benefits: Allen L Roland

"Social Security...is not a dole or a device for giving everybody something for nothing. True Social Security must consist of rights which are earned rights ~ guaranteed by the law of the land." Harry S. Truman, August 13, 1945

Voters should know that Social Security is not an entitlement but rather a system of wage replacement insurance, which we, as workers, pay for in payroll taxes throughout our working lives. The system provides benefits when workers stop receiving wages due to retirement, disability or premature death. And voters should also know that Social Security is solid and dependable; it hasn't missed a payment in 77 years, is currently running a surplus of $2.7 trillion, and is solvent for the next quarter century. In an economy that continues to be sluggish, with unemployment unacceptably high, Social Security is the solution, not the problem ~ and it must now be strengthened, if not increased, and most certainly not undermined by millionaire politicians who answer to the financial elite and ignore the public.

Social Security is built to last and here's a short 4 minute video that demonstrates that reality. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHAcy4SNVbo

As Thom Hartman correctly wrote in his blog on Monday ~ There is nothing Grand about Obama's grand social security bargain ~ " Despite the fact that Americans want Medicare and Social Security protected, President Obama has once again included cuts to the vital programs as part of his new budget proposal. As he's done previously, the President has offered up a change to cost of living increases - called the chained CPI - which reduces benefits paid to seniors, veterans, and the disabled… A new report from AlterNet highlights several facts that the President should consider before asking the poor to bear the brunt of more budget cuts. According to the report, half of American workers are "not at all confident" that they will be financially stable in their retirement, and only 57% have managed to save $25,000 or less."

Call the White House right now and tell President Obama: No cuts to Social Security benefits.

So what does CPI stand for and what's the bottom line on this latest Obama betrayal ?

CPI stands for consumer price index, a formula that looks at how the prices of stuff we need (food, for example) change over time. It's used to make cost-of-living adjustments in programs such as Social Security, veterans benefits and food stamps.

The chained CPI is a twist on that: It measures living costs differently because it assumes that when prices for one thing go up, people sometimes settle for cheaper substitutes (if beef prices go up, for example, they'll buy more chicken and less beef).

The Bottom line is  Cost-of-living adjustments would be lower with the chained CPI than with the plain old CPI. So depending on which formula is used, the amount of your Social Security payments could negatively change over time.

As Richard Eskow explains in Common Dreams ~ "What makes the chained CPI particularly unkind is the fact that millions of Americans have already had their Social Security benefits cut.  Benefits are determined based on a person’s lifetime earnings, so any significant loss in income now results in a benefit cut later. (More details here.)

Long-term unemployment is a benefit cut. A stagnating wage is a benefit cut. Wealth inequity is a benefit cut.

How many more cuts can the American people stand? A Deep Cut

How big is the President’s chained-CPI cut? For someone who retires at 65, it would be:

a 3.7 percent cut at age 75;
a 6.5 percent cut at age 85;
and a 9.2 percent cut at 95.

What about the dollar cost of the President’s cut? For the average earner, cumulative benefits would be cut by:

$4,631 – more than three months of benefits ~ by age 75;
$13,910 – nearly a year of benefits ~ by age 85;
and $28,004 – more than a year and a half of benefits ~ by age 95.

Unless the President’s budget excludes the chained CPI from IRS calculation, it would also lead to tax increases for all income except that in the highest tax bracket. So his Social Security cut would also be a middle-class tax hike."

Read full article ~ http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/04/08?nocache=1

It should be obvious that the formula for calculating Social Security's COLA's should realistically reflect the actual increases in beneficiaries' living expenses over time. The chained CPI fails that test because it assumes that when one particular product becomes more expensive, consumers can simply substitute a cheaper one. But the cost of health care, especially medication, is a major expense for seniors and it's not accounted for.

George Carlin knew the big picture on who really owns America ~ that education sucks as well as the mass media and that eventually they would come after our social security ~ three minute video  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dpcd0woY2KY

The movement that all Americans should get behind now is the Move to Amend Movement that states " We, the People of the United States of America, reject the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling and other related cases, and move to amend our Constitution to firmly establish that money is not speech, and that human beings, not corporations, are persons entitled to constitutional rights." https://movetoamend.org/

Before President Obama’s second term began, the World Socialist Web Site warned that Obama was preparing an unprecedented attack on the bedrock social programs. On the day of Obama’s second inaugural address, the WSWS warned, “It is already clear that the second term will mark an intensification of the right-wing policies of the first. The byword in domestic policy is austerity, targeting the core programs remaining from the 1930s and 1960s ~ Social Security and Medicare… The actions of the Obama administration in its second term are a confirmation of what was already clear from the first term: that the political system in the United States, whether headed by a Democrat or a Republican, is impervious to the needs and interests of the vast majority of the population, the working class. It is a system completely subordinate to the demands of the corporate and financial elite." See report http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/04/08/pers-a08.html

The future is here, people ~ and there is no change without action. The survival of our Republic is at stake. It's We the people, not we the corporations.

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/seniors-vets-unite-obama-is-pushing-us.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private Skype consultations (allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

GREAT LEVELER OF SOCIETY IS POVERTY

The Face of Poverty / Old Beggar by Maciej Ciezki

Mahatma Gandhi wrote Poverty is the worst form of violence. As such, America is the greatest perpetrator of this violence with close to 50 million people living in poverty including 16 million children ~ yet the Obama administration refuses to publicly acknowledge this great leveler of society: Allen L Roland

"Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes."  Khalil Gibran

John Berger correctly wrote that " The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich."

Nowhere is that more evident than the United States where the number of people enrolled in the food stamp program has risen by 70 percent since 2008 to almost 50 million citizens ~ while the Stock Market and corporate profits have soared to all-time highs.

Poverty is the state of one who lacks a certain amount of material possessions or money while absolute poverty or destitution refers to the one who lacks basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter.

Worldwide, about 1.7 billion people are estimated to live in absolute poverty today. One third of deaths ~ some 18 million people a year or 50,000 per day ~ are due to poverty-related causes: in total 270 million people, most of them women and children, have died as a result of poverty since 1990. According to the World Health Organization, hunger and malnutrition are the single gravest threats to the world’s public health and malnutrition is by far the biggest contributor to child mortality, present in half of all cases.

Instead of a worldwide War on Terror based on illusory fears we, as a society, must institute a worldwide War on Poverty (the feeding ground of social unrest and revolt) and in the process reinforce our innate desire of altruism and social cooperation versus separation and social deprivation.

Unless we make this a priority, as Gibran wrote, our children and grandchildren will be condemned to learn equality through universal poverty and be forced to eventually love and cooperate with each other through their common woes.

Half of the world is affected by this disease of poverty and the rest will soon be as our financial house of cards built on greed and selfishness eventually crumbles ~ as it almost did in 2008.

Last month President Obama signed a bill making permanent 85 billion dollars in budget cuts, which will slash billions from benefits for the poor. The cuts will affect subsidized housing, pre-school education programs and healthcare in underprivileged neighborhoods further leveling our society.

The people in power are not truly our friends and that includes President Obama. Three minute video ~ http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/22862.html

So what is "poverty"? According to the U.S. Census Bureau, it's less than $11,945 per year for a single person, and $23,283 for a family of four.

Nearly a quarter of people who live in poverty have jobs, but their pay is so low that they still don't have enough money to meet basic needs like food, shelter, clothing and health care. That most certainly includes veterans who are committing suicide at the rate of over 22 a day.

Here are five ugly extremes of poverty in America ~ courtesy of Paul Buchheit, AlterNet.

1. $2.13 per hour vs. $3,000,000.00 per hour "Each of the Koch brothers saw his investments grow by  $6 billion in one year, which is three million dollars per hour based on a 40-hour 'work' week. They used some of the money to try to  energy standards around the country… For CEOs and minimum-wage workers, the  difference is $5,000.00 per hour vs. $7.25 per hour."

2. A single top income could buy housing for every homeless person in the U.S. "For anyone still believing "they earned it,"  it should be noted that  most of the Forbes 400 earnings came from  minimally-taxed, non-job-creating capital gains."

3. The poorest 47% of Americans have no wealth. " In 2009 the poorest  47% of America owned  ZERO PERCENT of the nation's wealth (their debt exceeded their assets). At the other extreme, the  400 wealthiest Americans own as much wealth as 80 million families ~ 62% of America. The reason, once again, is the stock market. Since 1980 the American GDP has approximately doubled. Inflation-adjusted wages have gone down, but the stock market has increased by over ten times, and the richest quintile of Americans owns 93% of it."

4. The U.S. is nearly the most wealth unequal country in the entire world. "Out of 141 countries, the U.S. has the 4th-highest degree of  wealth inequality in the world, trailing only Russia, Ukraine, and Lebanon… According to the authors of the Global Wealth Report, the world's wealth has doubled in ten years, from $113 trillion to $223 trillion, and is expected to reach $330 trillion by 2017."

5. A can of soup for a black or Hispanic woman, a mansion and yacht for the businessman. "That's literally true. For every one dollar of assets owned by a single black or Hispanic woman, a member of the Forbes 400 has over  forty million dollars. Minority families once had substantial equity in their homes, but after Wall Street caused the housing crash, median wealth fell 66% for Hispanic households and 53% for black households. Now the average single black or Hispanic woman has about  $100 in net worth."

Buchheit offers two solutions for a much needed attack on greed  ~ " End the  capital gains giveaway, which benefits the wealthy almost exclusively and Institute a  Financial Speculation Tax, both to raise needed funds from a currently untaxed subsidy on stock purchases, and to reduce the risk of the irresponsible trading that nearly brought down the economy."  See article ~ http://www.alternet.org/economy/five-ugly-extremes-inequality-america-contrasts-will-drop-your-chin-floor

Obviously, the great leveler of society in America, if not the world, is also moral poverty for we have replaced altruism and social cooperation ~ the driving forces of evolution ~ with greed and selfishness and the consequences are now upon us with accelerating worldwide social unrest and revolt.

Is it any wonder that 44% of Americans are one financial shock away from complete ruin.

A stunning new report out of the Corporation for Enterprise Development, finds that 44% of Americans are just one financial shock away from complete ruin. Nearly half the nation doesn’t have enough savings to keep them out of poverty for more than 3 months, should they suffer a job loss, an accident, a sickness, or other financial setback. Another recent study out of the Consumer Federation of American, found that 40% of all American households live paycheck-to-paycheck, with virtually no savings.

Why are the rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer?  

Because state and local governments are taxing the super-rich at half the rate they tax the poor. That’s the conclusion of a new study out of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, which examined state, local, property, and sales taxes around the nation. According to the results, the poorest 20% of Americans pay an effective tax rate of 11%. And the middle 20% pay a 9.4% rate. But guess how much the top 1% pays? Just a measly 5.6% - half the tax rate of the poor.

A new report published by FICO Labs, finds that the student-loan delinquency rate rose 22% from 2005 to 2007 – with more than 15% of all students being forced into default on their loans. The rapidly increasing price of college tuition, the cutbacks in government assistance for students, and the non-existent job market, are all conspiring together to saddle our next generation of leaders with enormous piles of debt.

And most seniors over 65 years of age, which includes myself, who anticipated that their social security would be a safety net in their golden years are facing the sad reality that their social security check is the only thing keeping them from facing poverty ~ if not absolute poverty.

It all starts at the top with the US Government and the stark reality that the Federal Reserve is propping up the entire U.S. economy and house of debt by buying at least 61 percent of the government debt issued by the Treasury Department ~ "a trend that cannot last", Lawrence Goodman, a former Treasury official and current president of the Center for Financial Stability, wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion article published last year.

"Last year the Fed purchased a stunning 61 percent of the total net Treasury issuance, up from negligible amounts prior to the 2008 financial crisis," Goodman wrote. Goodman also warns that U.S. economy and markets are “at risk for a sharp correction” if conditions aren’t “normalized.”

"This not only creates the false appearance of limitless demand for U.S. debt but also blunts any sense of urgency to reduce supersized budget deficits." Goodman correctly predicted.

So the national deficit doesn't matter, right?

That's what TV economists and politicians continue to say.

Not quite the case ~ for we pay for the deficit every day and WE are ultimately responsible for leveling our society through excessive debt and eventually its offspring, poverty.

5 minute must see Video:

http://www.realecontv.com/page/22830.html

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of: Confucius

Allen L Roland

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/great-leveler-of-society-is-poverty.html

Freelance Alternative Press Online columnist and psychotherapist Allen L Roland is available for comments, interviews, speaking engagements and private Skype consultations (allen@allenroland.com )

Allen L Roland is a practicing psychotherapist, author and lecturer who also shares a daily political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com He also guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net