Liars lie naturally
To the editor:
On Wednesday, July 27, at 5 p.m., White House Press Secretary Jay Carney stated to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer during an interview that if Congress did not raise the debt limit by Aug. 2, the United States would automatically go into default. That statement was a bold faced lie. “Default” means failure to pay a contractual commitment to pay; not failure to please the White House and the international bankers.
Let’s look at some facts:
1. Revenue from taxes is about 60 percent of the federal government’s income or approximately $200 billion per month.
2. The monthly interest payment on the national debt is $29 billion.
3. Social Security costs $49.2 billion per month.
4. Medicare costs $50 billion per month.
5. The VA and military payrolls are under $6 billion per month.
The interest payment due on the national debt is money owed whose principle has already been spent by our federal government. Social Security and Medicare checks are items that in most cases recipients have been paying into for most of their lives, with payroll deductions from both employee and employer, when the purchasing power of those payments had a much greater value. A single man who turned 65 in 2010 earning the average wage of ($43,500 in 2011 dollars) will have paid in an approximate $265,000 to Social Security and $167,000 to Medicare for a total of $352,000 paid in. Total benefits received over a lifetime would be $432,000 which is slightly over 18.5 percent more received than paid in. This is a far cry from what was shown on Varney and Company’s morning show on the FOX Business Channel which indicated over $500,000 in benefits for the approximate same amount of taxes paid in. It is erroneous to believe that the average Social Security recipient is receiving more real financial value than they put in. That is a disingenuous accounting measure. In a private savings account they would receive greater accrued interest and in the case of a whole life insurance policy not only would they have been paid a higher return monthly, but their spouse would have received an approximate $85,000 lump sum payment at the recipient’s death. This is a quantified actuarial fact by a recipient who receives approximately $1,200 per month from Social Security. Furthermore, food and fuel along with real estate increases have not been included in the COLA since the Reagan administration. Your Social Security check is now taxed and your wonderful politicians have put a blank chit in the Social Security trust fund, rather than a secured lock box with tangible assets.
My proposal would be to first fund Social Security, Medicare, VA and military payrolls, and debt service in that order. This would still leave approximately $65 billion per month for other government functions and not increase the deficit.
In my opinion there are several government departments that we should consider abolishing:
1. The Department of Education: Savings costs for 2012 would be $71 billion. From its inception during the Carter administration to the present we have plunged in world- wide student testing competency from fourth in the world to now 34th.
2. The American Recovery and Invest-ment Act: This is a slush fund for the Department of Education which consumes nearly $23 billion per year. Student loans interest payments now can reach 6 percent under this government fiasco. If you eventually work for the government, those loans could be partially or wholly forgiven. That is like double dipping with those working for the government receiving full pay, and then having their education debt discharged. This is a corruption of the system and an additional cost to the taxpayers. Private banks used to loan money in a program called the National Defense Student Loan Program, in my time, and would only charge 1/2 percent to 1 1/2 percent and no cost to the taxpayers.
3. The Department of Energy: This department (another Carter failure) cost $29.5 billion per year. The DOE’s only claim to fame it could have is that in the past they have been instrumental in causing gasoline shortages, driving up the cost of gasoline, overseeing policies which reduced domestic energy production and increasing the cost of fossil fuel imports. In 2001 when George Bush took over as president, the price of oil was $30 a barrel, silver was at $5.12 per ounce, gold was $282 per ounce, and the Euro was at .84.
4. The Department of Housing and Urban Development: This costs the taxpayers $47.8 billion per year, and has been a social disaster. A well remembered government housing project in the Bronx was euphemistically called rape city. HUD is one of the prime suspects in the real estate bubble, and is at least in part responsible for our economic disaster.
5. The Department of Labor: This department is a hangover from the worst year of our Republic, 1913, which also included the founding of the pernicious Federal Reserve System, the Internal Revenue Service and the Rockefeller Trust. The Department of Labor’s claim to fame, originating under Woodrow Wilson, is that it has proceeded to destroy small business and responsible unions almost equally at the aggrandizement of the multi-national corporations.
Just those five agencies whose value is highly suspect and their shut down would save the taxpayers of America $193.1 billion per annum.
Furthermore, the megalomaniac concept of empire building instigated by the Zionist Neo-con Trotskyite wing of the Republican Party, which initiated wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; and with our troops stationed throughout the world in places such as Europe, Korea, Japan, Columbia and Peru, has cost the American taxpayers $1 trillion, $223 billion, $715 million since 2001. This financial dilemma that our warmongering politicians are responsible for to the tune of a $15 trillion deficit should not be confused with the even more important loss of not only our own blood and treasure, but the loss of millions of lives and devastation of quality of life for many more millions of people worldwide.
Our country’s illegal wars and heinous crimes, such as use of depleted uranium missiles, which have deformed thousands of babies in Iraq, and unreliable drone attacks, which have killed untold numbers of civilians, children, women and old men in Afghanistan, have caused America to become one of the most hated countries in the world.
The only decision you as voters and taxpayers have to make is: Do you want the continued funding of a sound Social Security and Medicare system that protects our seniors quality of life and medical needs, or the funding from your tax dollars for the empire builders and the continued vision of body bags, military funerals, and weeping families, to be the legacy of America?s history. In my opinion as a veteran, war is a racket, and we should bring our troops home immediately and protect our own borders. Considering that we have about 24 million Americans seeking work, and 24 million illegal immigrants, I believe our government policies are reckless, un-American, and treasonous.
Finally, President Harry Truman was correct when he observed, “My choices in life were either to be a piano player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell you the truth, there?s hardly any difference!?”
Jon Larsen Shudlick
Fort Myers