Americans’ Self-Contradictory Views of Socialized Healthcare

Click here to access article by Eric Zuesse posted on Washington's Blog.

I'm not so sure that Zuesse's argument is correct. He does support his argument by furnishing data, but I think he is drawing the wrong conclusions. Permit me to argue for another interpretation. 

The data suggests not that the American people hold contradictory views on government administration of universal medical care, but they, consciously or not, do not want the government of the ruling class to administer it. They have already experienced the government's administration of Social Security and Medicare, and they don't like it for quite rational reasons: poor service and/or benefits because the administration of these programs are deeply biased to prevent ordinary Americans from receiving benefits, frequently they reward privately owned insurance corporations abundant opportunities to enrich themselves, and experts like Allen Smith argues that much of the funds of the Social Security Administration are "borrowed" to cover government deficits.

... the truth about the trust fund has been kept from the general public for the past 30 years. Every dollar of the $2.7 trillion in surplus revenue generated by the 1983 payroll tax hike was embezzled by the government and transferred to the general fund. As the government spent the Social Security surplus money, the actual money was replaced with IOUs, which the government calls “special issues of the Treasury.” The public has been led to believe that the IOUs are real bonds, just like the marketable Treasury bonds held by China, and our other creditors. But the IOUs are not at all like the marketable Treasury bonds. They cannot be sold or used to pay benefits. They represent only an accounting record of how much Social Security money has been spent on other things.

Corporate media is flooded with reports emanating from so-called taxpayer and ruling class sources who do no want government funds be diverted to helping people. Instead they want government funds used to enrich themselves which means billions for weapons, support for war policies which require weapons production, and crumbs for the poor. You will rarely find articles posted in corporate media that reflect criticisms of users of government programs. Instead, you will find them in alternative, independent websites that the ruling class is trying to limit via their control of giant internet corporations like Google, Facebook, etc. You must search out and find critical articles from independent websites such as the following: Shock Therapy: Perfect Storm, Seniors Need To Be Tenacious In Appeals To Medicare, In Time for Christmas: A Social Security Plan Only Scrooge Could Love, Social Security: The 14th Amendment and “Odious Debt”, and Social Security in the Great Jambalaya.

Ordinary people need help from the ravages of ruling class government, but they won't get it from a government controlled by the rich and powerful ruling class. Only a government controlled by the people and for the people can accomplish this.

Left-liberals such as Zuesse frequently criticizes government policies, but cannot overcome their well-educated mindset that has been formed through so many years of capitalist indoctrination in capitalist ruling class-controlled schools.  

As Social Security and Medicare Go Bankrupt, US Gives $10.5 Million a DAY to Israel

Click here to access article by Rachel Blevins from Activist Post. 

The article includes other immoral and criminal spending on nefarious activities beyond support for Israel such as the never-ending wars in the Middle East. But such reckless spending at the expense of taking care of our elderly citizens omits our contribution to NATO and military support for many countries near Russia in order to intimidate the Russian government, the numerous US military bases strewn all over the world, the CIA which has a history of overthrowing governments on behalf of the Empire's corporations, the numerous "aid" programs designed to corrupt foreign governments and their officials and to support fake non-political NGOs which prepare the groundwork among foreign citizens to undermine their governments. This list doesn't include the domestic uses to surveil its citizens, subsidies and tax breaks to corporations, and on and on. 

These sad facts provide proof that the Empire's trans-national capitalist class is really concerned about the precarious nature of its control over the world and not the welfare of its citizens. That is precisely why they must deceive their citizens into believing that they are concerned about humanitarian issues.

A current example of the latter is the ubiquitous coverage they give in their corporate media of the separation of children from their parents under the government's immigration policies. This is not new, but it has been increasing under the Trump administration. Meanwhile they give military support to the feudal regime in Saudi Arabia which results in the starvation of the people, especially the children, of Yemen--but you won't see this covered in corporate media. 

The Deep State (the informal, behind the official scenes capitalist board of directors of the US-led Empire), which is smarting from their defeat in the last presidential election of their candidate Hillary Clinton, are using their news and information media to discredit Trump in every way they can to prepare citizens for his removal from office. The Deep State is not accustomed to losing, but in recent years they have been losing everywhere. Sooner or later the American people--not only the elderly--will suffer catastrophic consequences from these policies and their failure to overthrow this capitalist regime and establish a social system that is truly their own.

Social Security: The 14th Amendment and “Odious Debt”

Click here to access article by Dr. Nayvin Gordon from Dissident Voice.

Section 4 [of the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution]

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.

I take it that Gordon questions the legality under the Constitution for permitting this "borrowing" because it wasn't "authorized by law".

A frequent theme among Congressional people and corporate media pundits is that Social Security is running out of money and is in crisis. Well--no wonder--with the use of these funds to offset taxes to the rich and fund our never-ending wars!  

For decades the politicians have not only borrowed from Social Security to run the government, but 70% of the national debt has been borrowed from banks, financial institutions, corporations and rich individuals.  The politicians borrowed because instead of taxing the rich banks and corporations, they cut their taxes.  As a result, workers’ taxes and Social Security payments provide almost 90% of the federal government’s revenues.

I particularly want to direct your attention to his reference to the Princeton University study which you can find here. The study reveals that democracy is fake like much else in our capitalist-run nation.

A 2014 study by Princeton University came to the conclusion that the majority of the American public actually has little influence over the policies the government adopts. 

Trump is Obama’s Legacy. Will this break up the Democratic Party?

Click here to access article by Michael Hudson from Democracy at Work for Economic Justice. 

Wow! After reading this article and the following post featuring Hudson's views of the Social Security system, so many thoughts have rushed through my brain like a raging torrent after a heavy rain. Because they have overflowed my banks of good judgement, I will wait until tomorrow to critique his views as expressed in both posts. To be sure his views on Social Security in the US is right on, but his overview of political reality leaves much to be desired. I will concentrate my commentary tomorrow on the latter. 

'J is for Junk Economics': Michael Hudson on TRNN

Click here to access a 12 minute interview (with transcript) with Michael Hudson on The Real News Network.

Economist Michael Hudson explains why social security does not need to be 'pre-funded' by its beneficiaries.

Tom Brokaw Unwittingly Reveals Whats Wrong With Corporate Journalists

Jimmy Dore gives his sarcastic take on one of corporate media's most useful idiot talking heads in its ignominious history.

Get Ready for an All-Out Assault on Social Security by Washington in 2017

Click here to access article by David Lindorff from his blog This Can't Be Happening. 

As a recipient of Social Security and Medicare I can report my experience with these two programs. There has been an ongoing surreptitious assault on both programs for at least the last seven years, and it boggles my mind as to the lack of public outcry over this issue. As long as our ruling masters in the capitalist class can get away with their assault on retired people, many of whom are very vulnerable, they will continue to do so. But then that seems to be true of all poor people. The latter are the primary victims on our ruling class's imperial adventures within the USA.

Lindorff writes about how the Social Security should operate according to its rules, but not how it actually functions. For this information I have found one source that I believe is by far the most credible: 

Dr. Allen W. Smith is a Professor of Economics, Emeritus, at Eastern Illinois University. He is the author of seven books and has been researching and writing about Social Security financing for the past ten years. His latest book is Raiding the Trust Fund: Using Social Security Money to Fund Tax Cuts for the Rich. Read other articles by Allen, or visit Allen's website.

In his latest article Smith writes:

The $2.7 trillion in Social Security surplus revenue, generated by the 1983 payroll tax hike is gone. It is not sitting in the trust fund or anywhere else. The money was embezzled as it came in and used to help finance wars. tax cuts, and other programs. As the money was spent, government IOUs were issued to keep track of the money. The IOUs, themselves, have no market value and cannot be sold. They serve as certificates of debt. 

Back in August I calculated my basic living expenses compared to Social Securities "cost-of-living adjustments" each year. My cost of just my living quarters in a one bedroom apartment has increased over the past 10 years by 75.2% while my Social Security benefits have only increased 18.2% for the same period. Now the 2017 property maintenance fees alone on my condo are due to go up by 2.4% while my Social Security adjustment will increase only .3%! Apparently our masters are hoping that with this slow attrition of benefits, nobody will notice; and in the future nobody will be able to retire.

Being forced to give up supplementary health insurance and with only Medicare insurance coverage, I can no longer get a reasonably good physician as my primary provider of medical services. The only option I and others have who don't have supplementary private insurance is a clinic that is run like a charity organization staffed by poorly qualified doctors. This clinic appears to cut corners on their expenses by having nursing personnel make decisions on patient care that a doctor should make. 

Trump promises

by Pat Bagley.

Hats Off To Mother Jones [and privatization of public services]

Click here to access article by Paul Craig Roberts from his blog. 

The first part relates to the headline by applauding the Mother Jones' investigation of privatized prisons which, if you read the link to their report, you will find quite disturbing. But then he puts this in the context of a more general trend of privatization promoted by the compulsively wealth seeking ruling class. 

Being a retired person trying to live on Social Security benefits, I was especially drawn to his remarks about this subject. 

Republicans intend to privatize Medicare and Social Security. The road to Medicare privatization is the small percentage of medical billings that Medicare pays. Medical care providers are beginning to find that it is unprofitable to provide care to Medicare patients. When doctors cease to provide care under Medicare, the massive payroll tax revenues will be diverted into the hands of “more efficient” private providers.

The road to Social Security privatization is the “reform” of the consumer price index, which under-measures inflation in order to deny Social Security recipients cost-of-living-adjustments. The continuing decline in the real value of Social Security benefits will result in large-scale economic distress. This distress will be used to discredit the Social Security system and to privatize it.

I can personally attest to the validity of the above statement. My cost of just my living quarters in a one bedroom apartment has increased over the past 10 years by 75.2% while my Social Security benefits have only increased 18.2% for the same period. And I have been unable to find a private practice doctor who will take me on as a patient once they learn that I don't have additional private insurance.

Federal Budget plans billions for war, cuts to services

Click here to access article by Peter Gilbert from Workers World. 

Although this article was posted on November 5, it apparently written before October 29. To bring you up-to-date, the law was passed by Congress and signed into law since then. Otherwise this article provides a summary of the main features of the budget that just passed and signed into law. 

The basic deal increases the federal budget by $80 billion for the next two years, $50 billion in the first year and $30 billion in the second year. About half of the increase is earmarked only for the Pentagon, the remainder for unspecified “discretionary spending.” Those increases come at the cost of massive cuts to Medicare and Social Security payments to workers with disabilities (SSDI). The deal also includes additional funding of $32 billion dollars in the “Overseas Contingency Operations Fund” (OCO), to fund the ongoing U.S. imperialist aggression against Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Looting Made Easy: the $2 Trillion Buyback Binge

Click here to access article by Mike Whitney from CounterPunch.

Whitney fills us in on a story missing from mainstream media: what the recent plunge in stock prices really mean for the pensions of retired people and those looking forward to retirement.The practice of gambling with pension funds is only another illustration of the predatory nature of capitalist class rule that hides behind a pseudo-democratic facade.

Corporations are taking the retirement savings of elderly public employees and using them to inflate their stock prices so wealthy CEOs and their shareholders can enrich themselves at the expense of their companies. And it’s all completely legal. Under current financial regulations, corporate bosses are free to repurchase their own company’s shares, push stock prices into the stratosphere, skim off a generous bonuses for themselves in the form of executive compensation, and leave their companies drowning in red ink.

Even worse, a sizable portion of the money devoted to stock buybacks is coming from  “massively underfunded public pension” funds that retired workers depend on for their survival.

Sowing The GM Seeds Of Depopulation?

Click here to access article by Colin Todhunter from East by Northwest. 

While most of the literature on GMOs is concerned with the impacts of crops that have been genetically modified to deal with pests or herbicide spraying, there are very worrying trends regarding plants being genetically modified to contain industrial pharmaceuticals or possess possible contraceptive traits.

Then in the next paragraph he attacks the overpopulation argument that capitalist ideologues often make as the basic problem that threatens survival today:

The world’s problems are not being caused by overpopulation, as Turner states, but by greed and a system of ownership and global power relations that ensures wealth flows from bottom to top. The issue at hand should not be about stopping population growth in its tracks but about changing a socially divisive global economic system and the unsustainable depletion of natural resources.

While I think this attack is valid, I think it is inadequate because it does not make clear that overpopulation is an effect of capitalism rather than a cause of many economic problems. His argument leaves out the underlying reasons why the system, which results in such extremes of wealth and poverty, causes overpopulation: the extreme insecurity imposed by the capitalist system on the majority of the world's adults. Please spare me the effort of repeating my argument by reading the commentary in this previous post entitled "OVERdevelopment, OVERpopulation, OVERshoot".

A Living Wage When Working, a Poverty-Free Old Age When Retired

Click here to access article by Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson from Huffington Post.

...over the last 35 years, most workers have not shared in all of the increased wealth that the productivity has generated. Between 1948 and 1979, two thirds of the aggregate income growth went to the bottom 90 percent. One third went to the top 10 percent -- so the richest did gain disproportionately, but at least everyone shared some. In stark contrast, between 1979 and today -- the same period that saw the drastic erosion of the minimum wage -- all of the aggregate income growth has gone to the top 10 percent!

Keep this in mind the next time you hear the country-club set self-righteously proclaim that people need to tighten their belts. That we cannot afford a hike in the minimum wage. That our very modest Social Security benefits, averaging just $1,330 a month for retirees, must be cut.

Meanwhile, there is seldom any problem that our capitalist masters have in funding the military-industrial complex, funding for 1000 foreign military bases, funding black-budgets of the CIA that are often used to destabilize governments, and funding terrorist armies like Al-Nusra in Syria.


 

OVERdevelopment, OVERpopulation, OVERshoot

Click here to access the introduction to this book by the author William Ryerson, president of Population Media Center and CEO of the Population Institute. Posted on Post Carbon Institute.

Early in the introduction Ryerson writes:

Many of us today do recognize that the Earth and its resources are limited, yet too many people still cling to the notion that modern science and technology will enable us to defy physical limits. In the Middle Ages, alchemists sought in vain for a “philosopher’s stone” that would convert base metals into gold. They never succeeded. Why? Because what they were looking for did not, and could not, exist, because its existence would have violated the physical laws governing the universe.

It's clear that he recognizes that we live on a finite planet, but he still proposes the same solution, direct population control methods, that have been tried for many decades with little in the way of results to show for this type of program. I accuse him of looking toward a solution that defies social laws or realities that govern human societies. I'm referring to the lack of social justice in class structured societies that undermines the health and safety of its citizens. This I firmly believe is a well-guarded secret that social scientists in capitalist societies refuse to acknowledge for reasons that I will shortly explain.

I was first tipped off about this secret fact by a professor who specialized in population studies. I went to her back in the late 1970s because I wanted to take her course which was officially filled up. In one part of our interview she disclosed to me in rather hushed tones that existing population controls methods were missing the point of the reasons for the resistance by the targeted populations: large families were necessary to provide social supports for families that were otherwise missing in class structured societies. It is possible to find such documented evidence to support this argument, but one must look hard and long in population studies to find it. I quote one such source, page five from a book by Mohammed Sharif entitled Poverty Reduction - An Effective Means of Population Control:

There are studies that show that children are not liabilities but assets to poor parents--they contribute to the family's current income and provide old-age security to the parents [he lists eight such studies]. Children, especially male children begin working at age as early as six year and by age 12 they completely pay off to their parents the total cost of their upbringing and in additions enough to cover the cost for one of their siblings [cites one study]. This suggest that larger the number of children, the greater is the net income for the parents and higher is the standard of living.

In the absence of any organized system of social security, during old age parents have to depend on supports from their children. This is especially so because people who live by the day and have no assets other than their physical labor are unable to save for their old age.

Hence it is clear that the only real solution for over-population is a people's revolution to insure that their societies are run "of, by, and for the people". It is for that reason that this secret must be suppressed by capitalist authorities and that capitalist controlled websites such as Post Carbon Institute like to run such articles while ignoring the evidence that these programs don't work.

Jamie Dimon Gets a Personal Call from the Prez; Seniors Get Garnished

Click here to access article by Pam Martens and Russ Martens from Wall Street on Parade. 

The Martens have an exceptional ability to criticize the way the official government functions to serve the rich, however they seem unable to understand the fake nature of the way power is actually exercised in the US in contrast to the way its ideological institutions portray it which they apparently accept.

In this article they refer to a Wall Street Journal report of a phone call by Obama to Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan bank, to express their shock and disbelief over this phone call and other official government actions.

Sometimes we have to pinch ourselves to make sure we are not sleepwalking in a Dickensian dream.

There have been thousands of such incidents in recent history, which if added up, can only point to a more realistic understanding of who works for whom. Obama, as the Empire's Chief of Public Relations (CPR), actually works for Jamie Dimon who likely functions as a director of the Empire. That explains why Obama calls Jamie Dimon to wish him well. It is the same as any employee "sucking up" to his boss. The fact that JP Morgan is paying a fine is only to maintain the myths about a legitimate rule of law existing in the US. JP Morgan has been a huge beneficiary of essentially no-cost loans from the Fed.

How To Reduce Living Standards Without A Revolution: Slowly & Lie About It

Click here to access article by Roger Boyd from his blog Humanity's Test.

The author provides us with an explanation of the various methods the One Percent ruling classes use to reduce payments to Social Security recipients and to disguise the falling living standards faced by all Americans--except, of course, the One Percent. 

The rich, together with their bought-and-paid-for politicians, saw that it was impossible to explicitly reduce well-regarded programs such as Social Security (government-provided pensions) that benefitted the mass of the population rather than just themselves. So instead, they decided to reduce them a little bit each year by falsifying the CPI, upon which the yearly “cost of living” increases were based, in a way that made it underestimate the actual rate of inflation. 

The US budget deal and the political conspiracy against the working class

Click here to access article by Andre Damon from World Socialist Web Site. 

Now that the public has been sufficient harassed and softened up with the"dog and pony shows" of government shutdowns, our ruling masters have decided to go ahead with the drastic cuts to social programs that they have planned all along. The author generally summarizes these cuts and explains the various aspects of the fake drama.

The outcome of the budget talks was predictable. Against those who promoted the official narrative of the October government shutdown—peddled by both the mainstream press and various fake “left” organizations—that the main characteristic of US politics is the vast ideological chasm between the Democratic and Republican parties, the World Socialist Web Site wrote: “Behind the façade of partisan ‘gridlock,’ there has never been greater consensus between the two parties on substantive matters of social policy. They completely agree on making the broad mass of the population pay for the crisis of American and world capitalism.”

The Austerity Swindle: Debt and Deficit as Shock Therapy

Click here to access article by Ismael Hossein-Zadeh from CounterPunch. (Note: You will need to scroll down past the donor pitch to access the article.)

The author contributes to the decoding of one of the games that the ruling class likes to play through their government--austerity or else! It seems so appropriate at this time of year to reference spooks and hobgoblins to scare the bejesus out of the populace so that they will take their awful tasting austerity medicine, so that they will accept the heretofore unacceptable cuts to programs fought for as far back as the 1930s by working people on the streets all across the US.

“Wherever we look, there are hobgoblins. The latest is … DEFAULT. Oooooo.

Apparently the threats of international terror and China rising aren’t enough to keep us alarmed and eager for the tether. These things do tend to wear thin with time. But good old default can be taken off the shelf every now and then. It works like a charm every time.

No, no, not default! Anything but default!”

The Fed Could Simply CANCEL $2 Trillion of Government Debt

Click here to access article from Washington's Blog. (10/13/2013 & 10/16, please note: I've made a number of improvements to my commentary.)

This post contains a lot of valuable factual information, but there is also much hidden information if one is willing to look. The factual part includes the graphic of government debt supplied by NPR, and then there is the appealing idea of cancelling the debt to the Federal Reserve. However, the latter reveals a rather naive idea about the Fed. It is a heavily disguised and obscured consortium of major banks designed by the ruling financial class around 1913 to graft onto US society a permanent method of sucking the blood-money of working people for their class benefit. People in the Fed constitute a major part of our ruling class. (See a brief summary of US reserve banks in my commentary for an August post.)

The creation of money has been so thoroughly hidden throughout the centuries--deliberately so by banking people who are the core of capitalist ruling classes--that few people today understand this process. The fact that Fed critics such as liberals like Alan Grayson and old-fashioned conservatives like Ron Paul are tolerated at all by the ruling class is because they otherwise support the system of capitalism. I'm not well versed on Grayson's support, but Ron Paul would like to cut all social services. He would like to return to the 19th century when it was literally every man for himself.  

Remember, it was during the latter half of the 19th century that we saw the rise of the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, the Vanderbilts, etc.; and also the brutal attacks on working people such as the Ludlow Massacre, the Lattimer Massacre, the Columbine Mine massacre, and the Homestead Strike (you probably didn't learn much about these incidents in your education). The 19th century industrial and financial titans' rise to power created the ruling class as we know it today (see also this). The latter are the beneficiaries of these 19th century capitalists (also known as "robber-barons") who created the foundation for the construction of the wealthy and extremely powerful 1% of the One Percent who now rule the US and much of the world. So, no, we can't turn back the historical clock, and we shouldn't want to! And, the financial ruling class of today certainly doesn't want to, and won't permit such ideas of canceling government debts owed to them. Those who control the creation of money are top dogs in the capitalist system because they not only earn interest from money "created out of thin air", but control how that money is spent.

To shift subjects a bit, notice the debt owed to Social Security on NPR's graphic. This fund consists of money contributed by workers and their employers equally since the 1930s. Social Security has always been portrayed as a trust fund, but it is unlike any trust fund that we know about. This fund has not been set aside to benefit us so much as it has been to fund the government--and you know what the latter does with the money (think wars and military-industrial complex). Yes, the government of, by, and for the ruling capitalist class has been pilfering money from our Social Security Trust Fund to pay for their wars so that they can receive tax breaks. Read material by Professor Allen W. Smith to learn about this theft (here, here, and here).

Tea Party’s shutdown lunacy

Click here to access the interview with Doug Henwood posted on Salon.

This left business observer argues that Tea Party Republicans are out of the control of the financial ruling class who are now starting to take notice especially when foreign financial authorities are starting to issue warnings. The status of the US dollar as a safe-haven is at stake for the Empire--without that the Empire couldn't exist. Empire directors sell US government paper to some extent like the Mafia use disguised threats to get protection money. As long as the Empire can use the threat of violence against any adversary, the world's capitalists will buy this paper in order to safely store their ill-gotten wealth. Because he sees the Tea Party actions undermining the credibility of this safe-haven, he also views the crisis as much more serious than I do.

I still tend to see that this crisis has largely been engineered by the ruling class in an effort to move public opinion in the direction of accepting cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Taking advantage of crises or creating crises is one of the prime methods that ruling class directors have been using in recent decades to shape public opinion to serve their interests. If I am correct, I think we should see a settlement made, at least to keep the government open, in the next few days, but much later if Henwood is correct.

Look at what Obama would like to do: Obama would like to keep the government funded and keep us paying interest on our Treasury debt. But he would also like the old Bowles-Simpson “Grand Bargain” of cuts to Social Security and Medicare. He came into office talking about that, and he hasn’t really lost his drive to do it. So he’s got what is essentially an orthodox austerity agenda, which would please most of the mainstream parts of Wall Street and the Fortune 500. 

See also this article from World Socialist Web Site entitled " Amid government shutdown, Obama signals cuts to Social Security, Medicare".