THE AARP DECLARES WAR ON YOUNGER AMERICANS

It is a cause of dismay, if not outright sadness.  Young people, by and large, just can't seem to get worked up about matters political.  That's too bad, because they might be interested in knowing that one of America's largest and most effective lobbying organizations has just declared war on them.  The AARP has now decided that it's going to fight any effort by President Bush to privatize, even partially, that debacle known as Social Security.  If younger Americans had any idea what was happening to them here they would demanding change.  If young Americans truly had a handle on the future, and on the fact that they will one day reach that magic age when they stop working and live on their retirement income, they would be marching on DC and occupying congressional offices until change was made.  Sadly, these young Americans who are getting so royally screwed by Social Security and the AARP are far more concerned with sports, pop culture and who they're going to 'hook up" with this weekend.  

The time will come, though, when these people who today are preoccupied with the grossly unimportant will suddenly realize that they've been robbed blind.  For their entire working lives they had 14% of their earnings ripped off as a Social Security "contribution."  In time they will find out that if they are actually lucky enough to get any of this money back when they reach the age of about 70 or so, they will have realized a return of less than 2% on their "investment.'

Social Security is running out of money.  Depending on who you listen to, in about 15 to 18 years Social Security taxes will not be sufficient to pay the Social Security benefits to the people then receiving them.  At this point the government will have only a few options.  Here are the choices:

1. Extend the retirement age in hopes that many more Americans will actually do the government the favor of dying before they can collect any or all of their benefits.
2. Deny Social Security benefits to those who worked hard and made good financial decisions in their lives, thereby insuring themselves a sufficient retirement income outside of Social Security.  No ... their "contributions" will not be refunded.
3. Extend the wage base for taxes so that achievement-oriented Americans can poor even more money into this financial sewer; more money that they will never, ever get back.

You do know, don't you, that there is absolutely no legal guarantee that you will receive one single penny of the money that is taken from you.  No guarantee at all.  The congress can vote tomorrow to end the system and keep every dollar that has been paid in Social Security taxes.  There would be nothing you could do about it.  Nothing except, that is, to vote against the jerk who stole your money.  All your local politician would have to do is come up with a little pork for the district or state and everything would be forgiven.

And just which group of Americans is hurt the most by Social Security?  Black males.  If you're a black male this is the ultimate "disrespect."  You're being ripped off big time.

Explanation:  Divide the people who have been paying Social Security taxes for the past 40 years into four basic groups.  White Males, black males, white females, black females.  Statistics will show that of these four demographic groups white females have the longest life expectancy; black males the shortest.   In 2002 the life expectancy for a newborn white female was 79.9 years.  The life expectancy of a newborn black male was 68.8 years.  If you were born after 1960 your Social Security full retirement age is 67.  This means that a black male can expect to get Social Security benefits for about two years, while a white female can expect to receive those benefits for almost 13 years.   You do the math.  even if you went to a government school you can figure out that the average white female will receive Social Security benefits 11 years longer than the average black male.  It has been estimated that during his lifetime the average black male will lose about $10,000 in income that will be forcibly transferred to a white woman.  

The solution?  Privatization!  If you own your own account it can't be taken from you or your family and given to some stranger living in a retirement community in Palm Desert, California.  If you have the misfortune to die before the law allows you to start withdrawing retirement benefits from your account the money goes to your family.   Isn't that the way you would want it?  Wouldn't you want that money to be spent to make your spouse or children rather than someone you didn't know and who might not have even given you the time of day if you had known them during life? 

This is absurd, folks.  We're supposed to be living in free country that recognizes property rights.  You own you, not the government.   You work for you, not for some stranger.  In a free country your government should not seize your money by force and put it into a phony "retirement" fund that earns you a sub-par rate of return and to which you have no legal right beyond what politicians are willing to grant.  When you die the money you earned during life shouldn't be seized by government to be transferred to another individual you don't know while your family scrambles about looking for a way to keep their home and pay for your funeral, but that's exactly what the AARP is fighting for.  

You do know what happened in Chile, don't you?  Chile, for God's sake!  They got it right!  

Chile used to have a Social Security system that was a virtual copy of ours.  Chile, however, didn't have an AARP.  What Chile did have was politicians who realized that their system was doomed to collapse, and who did something about it.  Chile privatized every individual's retirement benefits.  The former Chilean secretary of labor says that Chile first "ended the illusion that both the employer and the worker contribute to retirement."  That's a huge step.  The dumb masses in America still actually believe that their employers actually "contribute" a matching amount to their Social Security "account."  It's those government schools again.  

Americans even believe that there's actually a Social Security trust fund.  Yesterday's USA Today story about the AARP's opposition to privatization contained this line:  "Excess payroll taxes are held in a trust fund for future benefit payments."  That's just flat-out wrong.  USA Today reporter Jim Drinkard either knows it's wrong, and lied intentionally, or he's not bright enough to be writing for a national newspaper.  There is no Social Security money being held anywhere.  It's all spent.  Every single penny.  What the politicians don't have to spend on current Social Security benefits they seize and spend on their various spend-and-elect schemes.  

Today in Chile workers pay 10% of their pretax earnings into their own retirement plans.  They can elect to pay an additional 10% in pretax earnings if they wish.  The companies who manage these funds are prohibited by law from engaging in any other type of business.  The sole business purpose of these companies is to take these privately owned retirement accounts and grow them.   If they die before the retirement age the money goes to their families.  If Chileans live to retirement age they have three options:

1. Purchase a family annuity from a life insurance company.
2. Leave their funds in a personal account and make monthly withdrawals adjusted to match their life expectancy.
3. Any combination of 1 and 2.

The government steps in to guarantee a "minimum pension" for people who have worked at least 20 years and who's benefits don't meet the minimum monthly amount required by the Chilean law.

In Chile 95% of workers participate in the private plan.  In America 100% of workers don't have that option, and the AARP is doing everything it can to make sure they never do.

Thanks, AARP.  If younger Americans ever figure out what an enemy to their financial future you truly are things may change and you may lose that grip you have on government.

ISLAMIC TERRORISTS STRIKE AGAIN

Al-Qaeda is claiming responsibility for the attack on the US Consulate in Saudi Arabia yesterday. The Islamic terrorists (not "militants" as most of the media will call them) threw grenades and forced their way into the building. They exchanged gunfire with Saudi security forces. Three of the five attackers were dispatched to their proverbial eternal celestial desert sand nap. Five consular employees were killed, thankfully none of them were Americans.

Are you getting the message here?  Al-Qaeda is still out there - planning, plotting and continuing their campaign of Islamic terror. Just as always, they believe it is their duty as a Muslim to kill as many Americans as possible. They show no signs of letting up. They've got the motive, the means and the opportunity to continue to try and slaughter as many innocent people as they can.

The more of them we kill overseas, the less of them we'll have to face at home.

ELECTIONS IN AFGHANISTAN

The nay-sayers are now predicting elections will not be held in Iraq next month and that any effort to bring a democratically elected government to Iraq will fail.  Remember, please, that  those very same people were saying elections would never happen in Afghanistan. Impossible, the experts said - after all, this was Afghanistan....the mighty Soviet Union couldn't even invade and control the country after a decade!

Yet, here we are three years after the United States liberated the men and women of Afghanistan from the bloodthirsty, vicious Islamic terror of the Taliban, and today the freely elected president of Afghanistan was sworn in. We did it. The United States took a country whose people it was said could not live in freedom. They didn't want to determine their own lives for themselves. Muslims can only live under dictators, right? Wrong.

Hamid Karzai had this to say at his inauguration speech: "Today whatever we have achieved -- the peace ... the reconstruction ... the fact that Afghanistan is again a respected member of the international community -- is because of the help that the United States of America gave us. Without that help, Afghanistan would be in the hands of terrorists, destroyed, poverty stricken and without it's children going to school or getting an education."

It took three years in Afghanistan....elections are next month in Iraq. Freedom and liberty work everywhere they're allowed to flourish.  All Americans should be proud of what has happened in Afghanistan, and what will happen in Iraq.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS COSTING LIVES

Now that the holiday travel season is in full swing, if you plan on doing any commercial flying, you know that you are likely to be subjected to more stringent security checks than before. Most people are willing to pay the price of inconvenience in the name of greater security. The only problem? It's a false sense of security. But it doesn't have to be that way.

A New York City think tank called the Manhattan Institute has published a study about airline security. Their basic findings are that people in charge of airline security are more worried about bigotry than they are terrorism. In other words, they're afraid of offending anyone, even if it costs lives. That's comforting, isn't it?

Political correctness has been the standard in airport security since 9/11. Randomly searching passengers, not racially profiling, feeling up little old ladies, confiscating nail clippers...all of it is a waste of time. Here's an idea: How about stopping and searching people who look like terrorists?  We can't do that though, can we?  Ohmigosh!  It might offend someone. We might be discriminating. Too bad.

The worst part of all is that it is a Bush administration official that is driving this. Norm Mineta, the Democrat secretary of transportation has threatened airlines with discrimination lawsuits. But how else are we going to stop the next airline attack by Islamic terrorists if we don't racially profile people who look like terrorists?

The flying public not only is no safer than they were on 9/11, we might actually be less safe. And it doesn't have to be that way.

I LOVE KAREN SMITH

And just who is Karen Smith?  She was behind the counter at a convenience store when a predator came in and demanded the money.  She handed the money over.  Then the predator told her to step out from behind the counter.  Karen Smith suspected that the predator was not asking her to step out from behind the counter so that they could dance, so she grabbed a pistol and opened a can of lead whup-ass on the predator.  He's in the hospital, Karen Smith is not being charged.  Karen does need to work on her aim though.  This predator should be lying under a sheet in a cooler right now.  

THE WORLD'S MOST EXPENSIVE LEWINSKY

Colorado Rockies pitcher Denny Neagle paid a working girl forty bucks for sex.  He got busted.  A year ago Neagle pled guilty to drunk driving.  An accident was involved.  Now he's been fired by the Rockies.  He loses the remaining $19 million on his contract.  Question:  Which is the more serious offense, paying a prostitute or driving drunk.  If you answer "paying a prostitute" then you're hopeless.  Nobody's right to life, liberty or property is threatened when someone hires a prostitute.  Prostitution has always been with us, and prostitution will always be with us.  It has been and will be a fact of life so long as humans roam the Earth.  Time to legalize.

TWO GEMS IN TODAY'S "VENT"

My boyfriend gave me a mood ring. When I'm in a good mood, it makes a green color. When I'm in a bad mood, it makes a red mark on his forehead.

The best thing about dating a homeless person is that at the end of the date, you can drop them off anywhere.

ON GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS

Guaranteed anger.  That's the result of my frequent diatribes about government schools.  It's no secret that I believe that the single greatest cause of child abuse in this country is the act of sending a child to the government to be educated.  Some parents react viciously to my remarks.  There are threats to advertisers, demands that I immediately be fired ... you know the drill.  These complainers are usually reacting to their own sense of guilt.  They know that they have abandoned their children to government to essentially be prepared for live in our society.  Here, though, is an email I received from one parent who gets it:

"My child has been out of school for 15 years.  At the time, I convinced myself she was getting a quality education in the government school.  i can honestly say looking back, it was the biggest mistake i made in raising my child.  Leaving her in the government school environment was a life changing experience, and not for the better.  i robbed my  child of one of the greatest gifts I could have given her, the opportunity for a high quality education."

Some parents actually pick up on this before it's too late.

READING ASSIGNMENTS

Today's Wall Street Journal editorial:  The United Nations is lost in space.  Why are we still wasting time and money on this organization?

Remember all of that pomp and ceremony last week when Kweisi Mfume resigned as the President of the NAACP?  The media sure ate that one up, didn't they!  Now it turns out that Mfume was fired.  Oh well.

What is the chief censorship organization in the United States?  It would seem to be a group called the Parents Television Council.  They're responsible for about 99.9% of the "non-Janet-Jackson" complaints.

More on Hip Hop -- the culture of violence.  Rappers get in a fight on a private jet.  I'll alert the media.

It's official....Bush's victory in Ohio has been certified.  The parties filing lawsuits contesting the result are admitting the outcome won't be changed.  So what's the point?

The battle for the future of Social Security is underway.  Get read for a political battle royale.  Some want to keep it the way it is, and some (like the president) want to offer private accounts.  The only question is how they are going to get the money.  Borrow it, or raise taxes?

One of the biggest gains among Republicans in 2004 was the Hispanic vote.  Gary Andres explains why.  Expect more Hispandering in the future.

If you ask the mainstream media, George Bush should not have been re-elected.  Bill Bennett says the mainstream media continues to be very out of touch.

The inside-the-beltway crowd still hasn't figured George W. Bush out.  Fred Barnes gives some reasons why the president is a little different than the usual chief executive.

Vladimir Putin's plan to install a puppet in the Ukraine had backfired.  William Safire explains why the strategy that worked so well in Russia hasn't panned out elsewhere.

Republicans are about to commit political suicide by pandering to the Democrats on raising taxes for Social Security reform.  Jack Kemp sounds the alarm.

Professor Mike Adams has recently been a victim of a hate crime, and he would like to file a report.  Entertaining as always.

With the resignation of Kweisi Mfume, the NAACP has an opportunity to stop being a Democratic shill group and start truly representing all blacks.  Star Parker has more.

If some Democrats are  convinced the election was stolen, then why all the hand-wringing about why they lost?  David Limbaugh offers his analysis.

Judges appointed to the Supreme Court will have a much longer-lasting impact than the administration that appoints them, and the stakes have never been higher. Thomas Sowell says we'll be living with the consequences of those appointments for a very long time.

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