The following graphic is EXTREMELY important

[Leopolds Ghost]

I meant to post this image weeks ago, but it was difficult to scan and mark up.

The events of the past 24 hours, with the planned Super-Commission that
will have the power to impose austerity measures on Congress and rework
Social Security and Medicare, compelled me to.

Why would Obama and GOP choose between default and massive spending cuts?
Because Half of all US debt is money stolen from the Social Security trust fund.
The objective is to bankrupt and privatize Social Security and require Americans
to purchase a variety of securities, including pensions and health insurance,
on penalty of fines.

Photobucket Tags: federal debt default social security

The following graphic is also a useful example of how to lie with statistics.
Note how the Washington Post has greyed out the portion of the federal debt
that is owed to social security, marked it as unimportant, and chosen to emphasize
instead the foreign debt by blowing it up in a magnifying glass.

Of course, the part the Post has chosen to emphasize is horrifying enough, with
its massive balooning of China's share of the US Debt during the late Bush and
even more so during the Obama administration.



Link to original un-annotated graphic (with statistical lies unemphasized) --

i46.photobucket.com/albums/f115/LeopoldsGhost/mountainofdebt1.jpg

As you all know by now, Obama's proposal to introduce individual mandates
to Pensions and Health Care is in fact at the heart of the Republican
corporate agenda, and the media has convinced millions of uninformed
Democrats that it is a progressive goal when in fact the concept was
initiated and implemented (in Massachusetts) by none other than Mitt Romney.

It was created by Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in private think tanks with
Blue Dog democrats who are working for Insurance and Wall Street industry
leaders. Now they want to extend individual mandates to Social Security and
Medicare.

What you need to understand is that the present federal debt crisis was
specifically manufactured to achieve this goal. The present compromise
was in the works years ago. What you are seeing now is all kabuki theater.

The goal was to rack up so much federal debt that the government would steal
from the Social Security trust fund, and then pretend that Social Security
was bankrupt so as to "pay off the debt" by ensuring that Social Security
no longer needs to be paid back the money.

If Congress refuses to do so, then under Obama's new compromise proposal
automatic austerity measures will kick in (CNN), and this was Obama's contribution
to the proceedings, ensuring that all other creditors will receive a windfall
in dividends from paying off the non-federal debt (to private investors and
foreign governments) even though money stolen from Social Security is the
portion of the debt that is balooning, which is why nobody ever complains
about the cost of the Middle East War.

[NYC_SKP]

1. I can provide you with a high resolution PDF file of that page. Here you go...

It's a PDF, mind you, but nice and clear.

My thanks to my friend, James:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/rw/WashingtonPost/Content/Epaper/2011-07-17/Gx1.pdf

Feel free to use with attribution to the Washington Post, linked from http://www.washingtonpost.com/todays_paper?dt=2011-07-17&bk=G&pg=1

:thumbsup:

[Leopolds Ghost]

4. As you can tell, the original image is rife with statistical lies (as is typical of the Post)

And I can't edit a PDF in order to point out the key parts of the graphic (as I have above).

The un-annotated graphic leads one to an entirely different, misleading conclusion (if you
avoid looking at the grey areas as the Post knows most people will).

This is the same newspaper that wrote a headline on page A9 saying that their own NYT/WaPo
hand recount of the 2000 election proved Bush was the victor under "all scenarios" and went
on to say in the third paragraph that "There were a couple scenarios under which Gore won,
but only when all ballots were counted, including those the Gore campaign had conceded."

[Leopolds Ghost]

12. So, yeah, thank the guys in the trenches @ Post but I can't edit PDF to highlight SS portion

Unfortunately photobucket is shrinking the scanned version (with comments) I did post.

I can re-upload it at max 1024 width, that should work.

[Leopolds Ghost]

2. Note the lie right up top: "Foreign investors hold the largest share of the national debt."

$5.7 trillion (as much as the total US Debt when Bush came to office) is owed to Social Security,

embezzled by the same fiends in Congress and the Treasury Department who used to work on those
junk mortgages over on Wall Street. These are the same people who privatized the nation's monetary
supply by setting up the Federal Reserve in the first place -- they can call any accounting trick legal.

Hell, I work for a nonprofit and our accountant advised our board to call all board giving a
loan -- which they do not expect to be paid back -- using the exact same theory under which
money taken out of Social Security and given to another agency (defense, homeland security,
insurance industry tax breaks and giveaways) is labeled an interagency loan.

[Lorien]

3. They've already set up the "mandate' precedent, so this isn't far fetched. nt

[Leopolds Ghost]

5. This is cold, hard facts. But yeah, my comments on the mandate are assumptions.

Not too far-fetched assumptions, since Obama's policy wonks have already stated they want to extend Medicare Part D style privatization to other aspects of the entitlement program, basically the opposite of the "Medicare for all" envisioned by single payer advocates.

[TheWraith]

6. Unrecommended for the fact that you are saying lies.

I don't know if you know they're lies, but they are.

"the planned Super-Commission that will have the power to impose austerity measures on Congress"

No such power exists. Congress votes on anything that they come up with.

"and rework Social Security and Medicare, compelled me to."

And again, this is totally false. They have no power to "rework" Social Security OR Medicare unless the Congress passes it and Obama signs it.

"Because Half of all US debt is money stolen from the Social Security trust fund."

There's so many things wrong with that sentence, it's almost hard to know where to start. The SSTF is invested in treasury bonds: that's not "stealing" money any more than your bank is "stealing" your money when you deposit it in a savings account.

The rest of this post is, frankly, borderline conspiracy theory nonsense.

[Leopolds Ghost]

10. You clearly did not read the article on the compromise debt cieling plan. You are uninformed.

I don't know if you know they're lies, but they are.

"the planned Super-Commission that will have the power to impose austerity measures on Congress"

No such power exists. Congress votes on anything that they come up with.

The bill would impose automatic austerity measures across the board if Congress
fails to pass what they come up with, which is actually worse than
my original phrasing implied.

"and rework Social Security and Medicare"

And again, this is totally false. They have no power to "rework" Social Security OR Medicare unless the Congress passes it and Obama signs it.

Your sophistry makes me think you work in the business of politics.

"Because Half of all US debt is money stolen from the Social Security trust fund."

There's so many things wrong with that sentence, it's almost hard to know where to start. The SSTF is invested in treasury bonds: that's not "stealing" money any more than your bank is "stealing" your money when you deposit it in a savings account.

You are claiming that the SSTF was always invested in Treasury bonds and that therefore it should not be considered federal debt? If so, why is it labeled as money "borrowed" from Social Security which the government does not expect Social Security to be able to recoup? Numerous commentators in respected publications have remarked on this falsehood that the administration and Congress are broadcasting about how Social Security is in danger of default and must be "reformed" in order to "decrease the federal debt". Do tell the Obama administration since the objective of the balanced budget amendment is to eliminate all federal debt.

The rest of this post is, frankly, borderline conspiracy theory nonsense.

You don't know what you're talking about. MSNBC themselves noted the appalling nature of Standard & Poor's conduct in the Congressional Hearings, for instance.

[Leopolds Ghost]

13. If you mean the concept that Mitt Romney and Gingrich first proposed Individual Mandates is a lie,

I am sad to inform you that I have been reading about their efforts to push Individual Mandates since before they passed in Massachusetts. It was indeed a Republican vision to privatize health care by imposing individual mandates, well to the right of what Nixon proposed and well to the right of what Clinton proposed. Democrats bought it hook, line and sinker because Edwards was in on it (he was in on the think tank meetings where at Heritage Foundation, Gingrich, Romney, etc. sat down with Clintonites and Industry leaders and crafted the grand compromise that led to the so called Obama health care bill, i.e. individual mandates as first proposed by Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Gingrich, and Romney in what was originally a drive to increase "personal responsibility" and decrease government involvement in health insurance.)

The Social Security and Medicare cuts will no doubt include Part D-style extensions of private plans into the realm of Social Security pensions and Medicare plans, eliminating the possibility of single payer now or ever in the future, and diverting massive amounts of Social Security pensions from the Treasury bonds and shoveling them into Wall Street, leading to a massive hyperinflationary increase in the value of stocks on Wall Street.

[bkkyosemite]

7. They are stealers and I'm not talking ball game players..

[amborin]

8. chilling to see it laid out like this

[dkf]

9. If you are protesting the use of SS funds by the general fund it's already gone.

If you are protesting that the funds won't get credited for the surplus, even if you count all those assets the trust fund runs out of money and that is the deficit you see presented in your chart.

[Leopolds Ghost]

11. The deficit presented in the chart is NOT the Social Security trust fund, so no.

And you are disagreeing with the other person who called me a liar for simply posting this Washington Post graphic.

According to him, the fact that the SS funds were taken for use by the general fund is not evidence that "they're already gone", it's simply business-as-usual investment of Social Security TRUST FUNDS in Treasury bonds.

Which is it? Congress decides.

As for your statement that Social Security "still defaults" in 2034, what does that have to do with the balooning federal near-bankruptcy / debt / deficit we are facing at present, given that nearly half of the money marked as federal debt is owed to Social Security, i.e. future beneficiaries?

[dreamnightwind]

14. Good response, and K & R for the OP

although I really can't read the graphic, unfortunately, small and blurry text.

[Leopolds Ghost]

15. I tried to re-upload it, but Photobucket auto-resizes it, shrinking it. Can anyone mark up the PDF?

Naturally I didn't notice this until it loaded, since the original un-uploaded pic
is reasonably crisp and clear.

Photobucket's shrunken version makes my eyes water.
I just tried to enlarge it, no dice...

Can anyone make a better (annotated) version using the PDF linked above (in Reply #1)
to highlight the Social Security discrepancy?

[dreamnightwind]

19. Yeah, no worries

Other people may be able to read it. I had better eyes in better years, and I'm looking at a small monitor.

I don't have a program that writes PDF files, unfortunately.

Thanks for this OP.

[Leopolds Ghost]

22. You're welcome. As for the issue of whether SS debt is really debt, or money owed Social Security

The Republicans keep arguing it is, and that is what links it to the debt debate.

Economists argue that it is simply pass through money invested in Treasury bonds.

If so then yesterday's seniors are financing today's balooning federal deficit
with tomorrow's dividend checks, no?

[Leopolds Ghost]

16. bumping for morning viewers n/t

[indurancevile]

17. Exactly. what the govt owes US workers far outstrips what it owes the bogeyman china.

and US "investors" in league with their congressional lapdogs are where china got the money.

btw, some of that money owed to "china" is in reality owed to international "investors".

it's a big fat reacharound.

We’re a sovereign issuer of our currency, the US dollar. It’s a free floating medium of exchange, not pegged to any other nations’ currency or any commodity. We can spend as little or as much as we want, and we are never gonna go broke. We can arguably spend too much into the economy and cause inflation, and by so doing could cause problems in the bond market by making our currency less attractive to investors – but this is not an immediate concern. There is too much of an overhang of employable resources at one end and goods/services at the other to make inflation anything more than a theoretical possibility.

China holds billions of USD because we have a trade imbalance with them. We import far more from them than we export to them. If China exchanged those USD for yuan it would cause inflation within their economy so they instead hold them in reserve. This enables them to maintain their peg to the USD ( keeping their currency artificially low in relation to the USD, making their goods cheaper here). With the exception of the foreign exchange market, banks only take deposits in their own currency. China therefore deposits their billions of USD in Chinese subsidiaries of US banks, holding them in what is effectively a checking account. In order to derive some return on their holdings, the Chinese direct the US banks to debit their checking account and credit a savings account (Treasuries). At maturity the bank will dissolve the savings account and credit the original investment plus interest back into the checking account. That’s it. No loan, no own, nobody borrowing nothing.

The current yield on a 10 year Treasury is around 3%, pretty much a historic low. Long term rates are really what short term rates are expected to be into the future. Does 3% for 10 years sound like investors are fearing inflation?

The Chinese don’t own us, we’re not facing hyperinflation, we’re not going broke. The deficit and debt hawks are wrong. We desperately need federal spending to offset our trade imbalance and especially to allow our debt-ridden private sector to continue to pay down its debt. US public debt was somewhere around 80% of GDP last time I checked. We certainly should spend more wisely, jobs creation and local/state debt relief to preserve jobs and services need to replace military waste – but the public debt/GDP ratio puts us in the middle of the pack, percentage-wise. Also increasing ( or constructively redirecting) federal spending towards employment would shrink the deficit, which is largely due to the automatic stabilizers of unemployment benefits and lowered taxes caused by job loss. The problem isn’t government – it’s lack of government due to rollback of the policy enacted to prevent another Great Depression.

http://www.roundtree7.com/2011/07/rezdog-economists-agree-we-dont-borrow-nothin-from-china/.

[sabrina 1]

18. I don't think anyone who has been watching all of this

for the past few years, and who has listened to the twisted rhetoric about SS, doubts that this whole mess is geared to privatize SS, or to start the process.

We will have to do something to stop them.

The Heritage Foundation wrote a whole paper on privatizing SS years ago and these people don't give up.

Best to ignore the deniers. The more peopled who are made aware of all of this, the more possible it is to stop it.

Thanks for the work you did on this. It is appreciated. And yes, it is always amazing how they never call the debt owed to SS a Govt Debt or describe the Fund as a US creditor, like China, only bigger, as you point out. I have never seen so much effort by politicos to try to keep these facts from being seen.

[woo me with science]

27. +1

[Leopolds Ghost]

20. According to WH, expiration of Bush Tax cuts & not cutting entitlements actually seen as poison pill

From the White House press release, it appears that Obama is actually using the prospect of an alternative sequester bill -- in which Medicare and Social Security are NOT "reformed" and defense spending is cut INSTEAD, and the Bush Tax Cuts are NOT extended -- as elements of a http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1625408">poison pill austerity measure, which Obama states in his press release would be "unacceptable to both parties":

4. A STRONG ENFORCEMENT MECHANISM TO MAKE ALL SIDES COME TOGETHER

* The Deal Includes An Automatic Sequester to Ensure That At Least $1.2 Trillion in Deficit Reduction Is Achieved By 2013 Beyond the Discretionary Caps: The deal includes an automatic sequester on certain spending programs to ensure that—between the Committee and the trigger—we at least put in place an additional $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction by 2013.
* Consistent With Past Practice, Sequester Would Be Divided Equally Between Defense and Non-Defense Programs and Exempt Social Security, Medicaid, and Low-Income Programs: Consistent with the bipartisan precedents established in the 1980s and 1990s, the sequester would be divided equally between defense and non-defense program, and it would exempt Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, programs for low-income families, and civilian and military retirement. Likewise, any cuts to Medicare would be capped and limited to the provider side.
* Sequester Would Provide a Strong Incentive for Both Sides to Come to the Table: If the fiscal committee took no action, the deal would automatically add nearly $500 billion in defense cuts on top of cuts already made, and, at the same time, it would cut critical programs like infrastructure or education. That outcome would be unacceptable to many Republicans and Democrats alike – creating pressure for a bipartisan agreement without requiring the threat of a default with unthinkable consequences for our economy.

5. A BALANCED DEAL CONSISTENT WITH THE PRESIDENT’S COMMITMENT TO SHARED SACRIFICE

* The Deal Sets the Stage for Balanced Deficit Reduction, Consistent with the President’s Values: The deal is designed to achieve balanced deficit reduction, consistent with the values the President articulated in his April Fiscal Framework. The discretionary savings are spread between both domestic and defense spending. And the President will demand that the Committee pursue a balanced deficit reduction package, where any entitlement reforms are coupled with revenue-raising tax reform that asks for the most fortunate Americans to sacrifice.
* The Enforcement Mechanism Complements the Forcing Event Already In Law – the Expiration of the Bush Tax Cuts – To Create Pressure for a Balanced Deal: The Bush tax cuts expire as of 1/1/2013, the same date that the spending sequester would go into effect. These two events together will force balanced deficit reduction. Absent a balanced deal, it would enable the President to use his veto pen to ensure nearly $1 trillion in additional deficit reduction by not extending the high-income tax cuts.

[Leopolds Ghost]

21. What this means is the trumpeted medicare protection and defense cuts are actually a poison pill

And that the White House is proclaiming them to be so, THREATENING to NOT extend the Bush Tax cuts UNLESS the tax code, Medicare and Social Security are all reformed in a manner that will pass the House.

[Leopolds Ghost]

23. Anyone have any thoughts on this?

[deaniac21]

24. There has never been a social security trust fund.

[Leopolds Ghost]

25. Do you disagree with the premise of the Wash.Post graphic or critics who've complained about this?

Or are you simply saying that Social Security invests all its money in Treasury bonds as a matter of course? If so, you do not feel the Government should reserve this share of the deficit in a Trust Fund (the Social Security trust fund) so as to ensure that it remains payable?

The Washington Post describes it as a trust fund, as do the Washington Monthly, etc...

Why should Social Security be considered part of the Federal Budget in the first place? Postal revenues, IIRC, are not. I'm not sure NASA is either. And they are purely public good agencies.

[Leopolds Ghost]

26. I would love to get more input on this n/t

[sabrina 1]

30. So Democrats have been lying for decades then?

:eyes:

[deaniac21]

31. And republicans. It's a pile of worthless ious. You don't have to

be a rocket surgeon to know that we spend much more than we take in. 57% of the budget is servicing our debt. :eyes:

[sabrina 1]

33. And that's a Republican talking point. Why are we seeing it here?

We the American People are creditors of the US Govt. We allowed them to use our money because they backed the bonds we invested in with the 'full faith and credit' of the US govt. We have a surplus of 2.6 trillion dollars, and that is a fact!

Now, the Govt has been borrowing, from us, from China and elsewhere to fund Rightwing hobbies, like all the wars, what is it now, six, they are involved in, and bailouts for their rich Wall St. funders, and to give them the gift of the Bush tax cuts, extended by this president, on the wealthy. Now they must pay back some of what they borrowed, but they don't want to. They have assets, but they don't want to use them. We will have to fight to force them to meet their obligations and pay their debts to all of their creditors, ESPECIALLY the American peoople whose funds they have frittered away on their wasteful, corrupt hobbies.

Please don't try this BS here, people here are fully informed about the facts of the SS Trust Fund, I am not going to waste time again educating yet another person who has failed to educate themselves and bought into the rightwing deceptions about the SS Trust Fund. But you clearly need to educate yourself. That talking point you posted won't go over very well with informed Democrats.

[Leopolds Ghost]

34. Exactly it's just like the way its been made legal to defraud Pension funds by declaring bankrupcy

So that those debts can then be forgiven by reducing benefits, and the major creditors can be paid off instead.

Republicans are business people, they feel the government should operate the same way as a large corporation would in this situation.

[deaniac21]

36. Try spending some of that "trust fund" and you will see what

it's worth.

[Leopolds Ghost]

37. So why are we going to be cutting Social Security and Medicare to pay back our debts?

Answer: because this is a roundabout way of defaulting on our debt to Social Security.

Just like companies reduce pension benefits in order to pay off their major creditors
when they are bankrupt.

[sabrina 1]

40. You don't have a clue what you're talking about.

Try spreading these falsehoods where people are not educated about this subject.

Even Republicans know they cannot default on their debt to their creditors, including the SS fund. Try doing THAT and see what happens.

It's amazing to see this kind of ignorance about programs that are the very foundation of the Democratic Party on this board. Stunning actually. Rightwing propaganda and deceptions work, but only when people refuse to educate themselves.

Any Democrat who attempts to deceive the American people with these lies, which I doubt they will, not blatantly anyhow, will not be elected. It's that simple.

[deaniac21]

41. My father used to say that you can't get blood out of a turnip.

Europe is a little ahead of us on this scale but when the money going out greatly exceeds the money coming in, it's pretty easy to do the math.

[sabrina 1]

42. Only if you accept that the US is going to completely

default on all of its creditors, and that it has no assets. This rightwing lie has been told for decades. The purpose is to eventually privatize SS.

The sky is not falling. And SS is solvent. It is the US Govt that is not. But if Democrats do their job, it will be.

This is nothing but yet another ploy to attack the New Deal Programs and only rightwingers or people who have not done their homework have ever fallen for it.

SS will be fine, and if it's not, then this country will be in so much trouble that SS will be the least of our worries.

What you are claiming, falsely, is that Republicans are correct, that the 'full faith and credit' of the US Govt is dead. How ridiculous, as it always was when they made those claims in an attempt to protect the wealthy from having to pay taxes.

You need to start educating yourself about this issue. To make these ridiculous statements on a board where people ARE informed, is simply wasting everyone's time.

Democrats have failed to do their jobs so far, but even they know that there is no way the US Govt can default on one of their biggest creditors, the American People, without doing so on all of their creditors.

SS will be fine, unless Democrats do not do their jobs and then, as I said, it will not just be SS we have to worry about.

[deaniac21]

43. Ignorance is bliss....

[sabrina 1]

44. Well, at least you realize it.

Some who propagate these falsehoods about SS from the right, actually believe them.

[woo me with science]

28. Thank you very much for this.

Kicking and Recommending.

[Fire1]

29. Yep, they've been pinching off of SS for many years. n/t

[Fire Walk With Me]

32. Kick.

[woo me with science]

35. Kick nt

[cliffordu]

38. Can you PROVE anything here, or is this just more smoke and panic??

The objective is to bankrupt and privatize Social Security and require Americans
to purchase a variety of securities, including pensions and health insurance,
on penalty of fines.

Can I get futures in tinfoil anywhere around here??

[Leopolds Ghost]

39. Standard corporate strategy. By going bankrupt it is the only way to eliminate pension liabilities.

Remember, the people doing this want government to behave more like a successful business.