Readers
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
Congress has looted Social Security funds
While we slept, Congress looted our Social Security.
High Social Security payroll taxes have contributed to yearly Social Security Trust Fund surpluses until the proclaimed surplus is now in excess of $2.14 trillion.
However, Congress has elected to sacrifice Social Security on the altar of corruption by spending the entire surplus, requiring the U.S. Treasury to cover the embezzlement by issuing non-negotiable IOU bonds to the trust fund. Such economically irresponsible and morally reprehensible behavior by Congress demonstrates total disrespect for working people.
Congress must now determine how to legally fund the IOU bonds when they mature. The choices are increasing taxes, selling legitimate T-bonds or monetizing the debt.
Congress will select the easy way out and ask the Federal Reserve to crank up the printing press and create money out of thin air. Of course debasing the currency means that the dollar becomes a peso and your Social Security check will buy only some coffee beans or, at best, a bowl of java.
Currently the yearly program surplus is about $180 billion. To save Social Security, the yearly surplus must be invested in precious metals so that future Social Security recipients receive something of value.
Yet Congress will scream out a refusal claiming that it will doom Social Security. What really frightens them is that we will gain control of our Social Security program and they will lose a cash cow.
Any politician who proposes a Social Security tax increase will expose his motive to increase the size of the cash cow for looting by Congress.
In the future when the Social Security eagle takes off on its monthly mission, what would you rather receive in your hand; a gold coin, a worthless Federal Reserve note or an IOU? The choice is yours.
Robert A. Dahlquist
Orange, Calif.
Glad that Republicans voted against pork
In the past, Republicans have all-too-frequently abandoned the principles for which their base votes them into office.
As such, it’s good to see that every single Republican in the House of Representatives voted against the corporate welfare pork-o-rama that President Obama and his lap dogs in the lamestream media deliberately mislabel as “stimulus.”
If this is the start of Republicans actually showing that they have backbone, then their chances for having a successful election cycle in 2010 are going up.
Mark Kalinowski
New York, N.Y.
Obama makes good picks to help economy
The current administration and Congress are striving to implement elements of fiscal and monetary policies that will turn around our economy. Talented people are hard at work trying to address these problems.
President Obama has made some wise choices to fill key positions in his administration, including members of the economic advisory team. These people have distinguished themselves in their fields of expertise and hopefully they will perform admirably well during the next four years.
The appointments include a plethora of former or current politicians, campaign aides, career bureaucrats, economists/finance people, academics and former generals. And they all have one thing in common: None of them is a current or former CEO or high-level executive of a major corporation.
Given the state of our economy and the problems in the private sector, I believe it would be wise to have a proven, high-level, business executive on the Obama team. Maybe the new secretary of Commerce should have a business background.
We have to employ all available resources, including business executives, to break the downward spiral of our economy.
We should spend the entire $825 billion economic recovery money on creating jobs in the private sector, not government or quasi-government jobs, and not waste any of it on tax cuts, which have proved to be ineffective in the current economy.
Donald A. Moskowitz
Londonderry, N.H.