February, 2025, Part 4, By The Numbers: More Outrageously Stupid and Wasteful USAID Spending of Taxpayer Wealth Around The World

 On a periodic basis we review the wasteful government spending via a continuing theme of “By The Numbers.” We review how poorly taxpayer wealth is being spent and wasted on stupid programs and projects and also how many government programs are being ripped off of billions and billions of dollars by fraud and criminal enterprises. Today is just another sad chapter on how politicians and government bureaucrats are pretty inept when it comes to safeguarding taxpayer dollars.

We have a really disgusting set of numbers today for you but before we get to them consider some of these very distressing numbers affecting many American citizens:

• There  are currently about 770,000 homeless Americans in the country today.

• Well over 100,000 Americans will die this year from a drug overdose because they could not get the drug addiction treatment they needed.

• 13.5% of Americans or about 47 million people are living in so-called “food insecure households,” households where it is often a challenge to feed their families because of unemployment and inflation.

• Of that 47 million, about 14 million of them are American  kids.

• About 26 million Americans are not covered by any health  insurance policy.

Yes, there are a lot of Americans in dire need of help. And as we have  pointed out many times in this blog, the American political class would rather spend our taxpayer dollars on stupid projects, both here and around the world, than help these Americans in need.

Part of Trump’s assumed mandate in his election victory was to clean up the wasteful spending in Washington and the massive corruption that comes with it. In just two weeks he has identified billions and billions of dollars that have been wasted by a single government agency, USAID. This agency has spread billions of dollars around the world on stupid projects while millions and millions of Americans suffer from a variety of problems as listed above. Most of these projects have been useless and have been poorly or never audited for the integrity of the money being spent.

We have already spent the  two previous  posts to show the ridiculous expenditures USAID has spread around the world while millions and millions of Americans suffer hardships. Those posts and the disgusting reality that came with it can be accessed at:

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/02/february-2025-by-numbers-part-2.html

https://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2025/02/february-2025-part-3-by-numbers-more.html

But the list of wasteful spending keeps getting longer and longer, beyond what we identified in the above posts:

• American taxpayers via USAID gave money to Afghanistan despite the country being ruled by the Taliban, an international terrorist group that brutally suppresses dissent and women’’s Rights.

• American taxpayers via USAID  gave money to Yemen, the home of the Houtis terrorist group.

• American taxpayers via USAID gave money to Syria and the many terror organizations roaming around that country.

• USAID has 10,000 people employees, and every year they give away $40 billion

• American taxpayers via USAID gave money to a transgender clinic in India. 

• American taxpayers via USAID gave $1.5 million to a Serbian LGBTQ group which  “advanced diversity, equity, inclusion in Serbia's workplaces and business communities.”

• American taxpayers via USAID gave $122 million to groups aligned with foreign terrorist organizations.

• American taxpayers via USAID gave millions of dollars to organizations in Gaza controlled by the Hamas terrorist organization.

• American taxpayers via USAID gave $4.5 million of taxpayer money to combat misinformation in Kazakhstan [Note: to me this is one of the worst expenditures: how is it possible to spend a whopping $4.5 million halfway around the world to combat “misinformation?”]

• American taxpayers via USAID gave $10 million for meals to an al-Qaeda-linked terrorist group called the Nusra Front

• American taxpayers via USAID gave $7.9 million of taxpayer money to a project that would teach Sri Lankan journalists to avoid binary gendered language. [Again, how can you possibly spend that much money on such stupidity?]

• American taxpayers via USAID gave $1.5 million to rebuild the Cuban media ecosystem

• American taxpayers via USAID gave $1.5 million  for “art for inclusion of people with disabilities in Belarus.”

• American taxpayers via USAID gave  $3.9 million for LGBT causes in Macedonia.

So as we often ask: what is more important, helping Americans in need by providing food, shelter, and  medical care or spending taxpayer wealth on transgender clinics in India, LGBT causes in Macedonia, etc.? If you think that USAID expenditures around the world are more important, then you and I have very different priorities.

But the insanity of USAID corruption seems to go on and on: Consider the following video where a gentleman spent a lot of time documenting even more stupid waste of money:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEaT08ysjT4

Of course, Washington politicians do not set out an objective to “see how much money we can waste today.” I would bet a lot of money that many of these stupid expenditures are tied back to politicians, either to their family members, their political supporters, or even themselves and the enrichment via tax dollars that come with these ties. Now the projects may eventually spend some of the money allocated on the purposes that are described but before that happens a lot of hands are greased, a lot of pockets and bank accounts are stuffed, and a lot of politicians reelection campaigns get enriched.

 In other words, USAID, and probably many other government programs, is nothing more than a money laundering scheme to ensure that current politicians get themselves and their campaign coffers enriched. As time passes and hundreds of billions of misspent dollars are identified, pay close attention to the Washington politicians that protest the loudest about Trump's efforts to root out corruption and wasteful spending. Those that protest the loudest are probably the ones most likely to have profited the most from these inane programs.

Meanwhile, Americans continue to go hungry, homeless and in need of medical  attention. What are your priorities?

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https://www.change.org/p/deseat-congress-reset-freedom

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Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

https://www.amazon.com/Love-My-Country-Loathe-Government/dp/1604942789/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=love+my+country%2C+loathe+my+government&qid=1607716020&sr=8-1

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com

http://www.cato.org

http://www.openthebooks.com

http://www.conventionofstates.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

 

Final Review: End Of An Error, Part 1 - The Many Failures of The Obama Administration: Military Failures

As the Obama Presidency starts to wind down we thought it would be a good idea to do a final review of the Obama era. We took an initial swing at that topic back in October, 2016 with a series of seven posts starting on October 9, 2016 with the following post:

http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2016/10/part-1-obama-presidency-end-of-error.html

Not unexpectedly, the review across those seven posts captured the myriad of failures of this Presidency. Diplomatically, economically, fiscally, militarily, legally, Constitutionally, integrity-wise,and in many other ways, in my opinion, this has been the worst Presidency of my lifetime. If you are a liberal, please read the seven posts, starting with the first one listed above, all of which are extensively sourced, before going off the deep end without thinking. This Presidency has stunk.

This week, we will update these topics, relying mostly on some fine analysis by Reason magazine, that again will verify how bad this administration has been. Today we will focus on how Obama and his administration has been the most warlike President, engaged in active military efforts the ENTIRE length of his Presidency, the first time ever.

What makes Obama so bad from a military and diplomatic perspective is how he promised he would be the exact opposite of what he turned out to be. Consider some of his quotes that helped him get elected:

- Obama, October 2, 2007: “Five years ago today, I was asked to speak at at rally against the war in Iraq...yet Congress voted to give the President a blank check”... “that left America mired in an endless war….We all know what Iraq has cost us abroad but these last few years we’ve seen an unacceptable abuse of power at home. We’ve paid a heavy price for having a president whose priority is expanding his own power.” 

- Obama promised if elected he would “turn the page on a growing empire of classified information” and would turn the page on the imperial presidency. "It’s easy to be cynical, about politicians promises, but I’m running for the presidency of the United States of America so that together we can do the hard work to seek a new dawn of peace.”

- Obama back in 1983 talked about "the relentless , often silent spread of militarism in this ocuntry."

- Obama: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

Okay, given these bold statements, what actually happened after these promises were made:

• By October, 2009, just nine months into his Presidency, Obama had launched more drone attacks than Bush had done in his entire eight year term.
• A week before he won the Nobel Peace prize, he sent an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan.
• He promised to have U.S. military forces out of Afghanistan by 2014 but in 2017 they are still there.
• During his two terms Obama ended up launching ten times as many drone attacks as Bush.
• He deployed U.S. Special Forces to 85 different countries.
• This past Labor Day, Obama ordered 70 airstrikes across six different countries: Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia and Libya.
• Less than a year after getting the Nobel Peace prize, Obama launched a seven month war against Libya, a country that posed absolutely no threat to the United States, without legal or Constitutional authority.
• Relative to Libya, he had the nerve to claim that seven months of military actions did not constitute a “war” for Constitutional purposes nor did it rise to the level of “hostilities.” How seven months of intense bombing does not raise to the level of war or hostilities is laughable.
• Obama initially claimed that U.S.military involvement in Libya would last days, not weeks, but eventually lasted seven months for which he was warned numerous times by numerous government legal resources (the Pentagon’s top lawyer, the attorney general, and the Office of Legal Counsel) that he was in violation of the 60 day window of the War Powers Act (WPA).
• But he ignored their advice and later had the gall to claim that this was not a war since there was not “the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties, or a serious threat thereof.” So in his convoluted logic, drone attacks and Air Force bombing runs are not war-like actions, insanity.
• We recently reported on an analysis that tabulated the number of missiles and bombs that Obama's Pentagon had fired and dropped in just 2016: the final tally was over 26,000 missiles and bombs had been dropped on seven different countries although there has been no authorization or approval by Congress or the American people for us bombing seven different countries at the rate of about 70 missiles and bombs every DAY in 2016.
• Despite all of Obama’s war actions across multiple countries, ISIS and terrorism is still very much alive and on the march and according to retired General Stanley McChrystal, former commander of all U.Sl troops in Afghanistan: “They [local civilians] hate us on a visceral level, evenb y people who have never seenone” [a U.S. bombing or drone attack] and Obama’s military actions are feeding a “perception of American arrogance that says, ‘We can shot where we want, when we want.’”
• And it is not just the Middle East where the Obama war actions are going on: he has deployed U.S. troops throughout Africa with little or no Congressional oversight or American public knowledge.
• And quite possibly all of Obama’s drone and bombing attacks have made a bad situation worse relative to the losing war on terror, according to intelligence analyst Patrick Lang: “The global war on terror has acquired a life of its own. It’s a self licking ice cream cone.”

Let’s review, Obama’s words prior to being elected: “mired in an endless war,” “unacceptable abuse of power,” “a new dawn of peace,” “turn the page on an imperial Presidency,” and “does not have the power under the Constitution.”

Let’s review, Obama’s actions after being elected: an almost unfathomable amount of drone and bombing attacks, undeclared, illegal and un-Constitutional warfare across at least seven different countries, likely thousands of civilians deaths and likely hundreds of children deaths as a result of Obama’s Pentagon actions, a terrorism threat that continues to grow quickly despite his military actions, and tens of billions of dollars in costs for a strategy that has failed miserably.

To quote Obama: “It’s easy to be cynical, about politicians; promises.” Uh, yeah, especially when the words are so very far out of alignment with the promises of the most warlike, ineffective commander in chief this nation has ever known. More Obama administration reviews throughout the week, they are not pretty.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

April, 2015, Part 5, Political Class Insanity: Secret Service MIssteps, Yemen Fail, and More

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time to review the latest political class insanity that has cropped up over the past 30 days or so. As regular readers of this blog know, political class insanity comes in many different forms including, but not limited to, the following craziness:

• Spending taxpayer wealth on idiotic programs and projects.
• Wasting taxpayer wealth on their own selfish financial and political needs.
• Implementing legislation to resolve problems that make the original problems worse or which created unintended bad consequences as a result of their legislation.
• Implementing legislation that supports their political donors and financial backers rather than the typical American citizen.
• Issuing idiotic and stupid comments.
• Overseeing government organizations that are incompetent, inefficient, ineffective, and wasteful of taxpayer wealth. 

As always, we have already identified new forms of insanity over the past week or so as we reviewed the past ineptness coming out of Washington and other bastions of American politicians. Today and tomorrow should allow us to get the best of the worst discussed for this month.

1) Let’s start off today’s insanity with some foreign affairs insanity. The following video clip

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=794496860640440&set=vb.341163402640457&type=2&theater

is from part of a recent daily State Department briefing. Apparently, the Venezuelan government is accusing the U.S. of trying to overthrow the government down there. In the clip, a State Department spokeswoman claims that this charge is baseless since the United States has NEVER intervened in the foreign political affairs of another country or tried to influence or change the political affairs of another country. 

The clip then pauses and rolls down the names of at least two dozen countries where the U.S. has been known to have intervened and interfered with another country’s political process. Which gets us to a question we have asked a number of times: do these political people know that they are lying or do they think that we are too stupid to check their facts, which in this case was pretty easy to check? 

In any case, more proof that we should not trust anything this Presidential administration says, given their weak history and track record for truth, integrity, and honesty. 

2) Staying with foreign affairs, consider the following Obama quote from last year:

“This counter-terrorism campaign [against ISIS] will be waged through a steady, relentless effort … using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground. This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.”

Again, most people would have a different opinion with what actually has happened in Yemen and what the President is saying. We have abandoned our embassy in the country and withdrawn all U.S. military personnel from the country, leaving behind about half a billion dollars worth of military equipment to be divvied up by at least three different terrorist organizations operating in the country.

On top of this, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee recently warned: "The problem is that we're not going to have any intelligence in Yemen. Yemen is one of the most dangerous spots in the world." One of the most dangerous spots in the world and we will have no idea what is actually going on inside the country. 

But the President insists that our strategy and relationship with Yemen has been a success as has his State Department spokespeople, as seen in the following video clip:

http://www.breitbart.com/video/2015/03/25/state-dept-we-stand-by-obamas-claim-yemen-a-success-in-counter-terror-strategy/

If Yemen is a “success,” I would hate to see what this administration considers a failure.

3) The Secret Service has been guarding and protecting the President and First Family for a long time. For the most part, they have done a great job in doing so.

However, over the past year or so, they have been shown to be most inept in many situations. We have seen German tourists in the White House wander off into supposedly secure areas, we have had White House windows shot out, we had an intruder actually get deep into the White House before being apprehended by an off duty Secret Service agent, and recently two drunk Secret Service agents drove right through an active crime scene on White House grounds. All of this in itself is insanity.

But on top of these breakdowns comes an $8 million budget request from the Director of the Secret Service, Joseph Clancy, that he would allocate the money to build a replica of the White House for training purposes. Clancy testified in front of Congress that Secret Service training is hampered by the lack of a good reproduction of the White House. Apparently, training is now done in a parking lot which doesn’t have the bushes and fountains as the White House grounds do. 

Given that in all of the decades up until today, an $8 million replica of the White House was not available and the Secret Service did a good job, I do not think that wasting $8 million today on a replica is going to resolve the current breakdowns in the agency’s performance. This request is a lame excuse for the current Secret Service management that obviously does not know how to do its job and wants $8 million of taxpayer money to buy time for its ineptness.

4) The wonderful website, Against Crony Capitalism, recently did some writing about how screwed up Defense Department spending and accounting is. The prime example is the snake bit F-35 fighter jet that is billions and billions of dollars over budget, years late, and severely under performing relative to what was promised. The author claims that the Pentagon has purposely underestimated the lifetime costs of the F-35 by two thirds and that the jet will end up costing taxpayers money for the next 30 years and will never perform at its originally promised level. 

For a comparison of how badly managed this project is, consider the reality that just the F 35 will waste more money than France and the United Kingdom spend on defense in one year, combined. Classic wasteful spending gambit, under estimate, over promise and end up spending more and getting less. to the level claimed by the Pentagon. 

But the F 35 is not the only black hole of spending in the Pentagon. The article also singles out the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). Although the Defense Department has cut back the number of LCSs it plans to purchase, the current cost estimate is that a single LCS will cost nearly $500 million more PER SHIP than originally proposed. This is a “hole in the water” that will continue to suck down taxpayer dollars and provide no real incremental value for the anticipated global missions of the U.S. Navy.

Let’s take the waste a step further. According to the article, a recent Government Accountability Office analysis found that more than half of the Pentagon’s top weapons programs increased in cost last year to the tune of $27 billion. That is just the increase in costs, not the overall costs and the increase happened in just one year. 

The $27 billion is about the size of the entire annual Department of Energy budget and about half of the Department of Homeland Security’s annual budget. All for weapons systems that are likely to under perform or never perform at all. Sad and insane.

5) The next piece of insanity looks really crazy on the surface. Eric Holder has probably ran the most corrupt and political Justice Department in a long time. He has refused to go after potential criminals that were Democratic Party related but did not hesitate to go after political opponents.

Keep that history in mind when we review the recent indictment of U.S. Senator Robert Menendez for various corruption charges involving a wealthy campaign donor. The charges involve actions that Menendez allegedly did as far back as 2010. If he is guilty, then it is rewarding to know that that the government will go after lawbreakers regardless of what their job or profession is.

But Menendez is a Democrat, and the alleged infractions happened years ago, which is totally out of character for the Obama administration’s Justice Department. Could it be that the Department suddenly found integrity? Or is it more likely that Menendez was leading the Senate effort to make sure that Obama’s negotiations with Iran and its nuclear effort was kept true and valid and that ticked off the administration? 

It is always fun when they turn on themselves with the upside being that a crooked politician may actually pay for his alleged transgressions.

That will do it for today, one more post tomorrow to wrap up this month’s political class insanity.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernmobama,washington post,politifactent.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

March, 2015, By The Numbers, Part 1: Social Security Going Bust, Pentagon Losing Weapons, and More

On a semi-regular basis we revisit the theme ”by the numbers” just to check in on the state of the country and political class using actual realities and their underlying numbers, not the spin or lies from our politicians. You see, politicians usually have nothing to gain by looking at reality and the numbers since they are more than likely to have screwed up reality and our lives in the first place.

That is why they would rather lie and deceive than tell the truth. But that approach can be destroyed by looking at the hard numbers behind the mess they have created. I once worked for a boss whose favorite saying was: "There is nothing more devastating to an opinion than the right number.” And that is what we try to do with this theme, devastate politicians’ opinions by looking at the right numbers.

So let’s take a look at the numbers that have recently cropped up and again prove that the political class in America continues to be one of the worst set of people to ever hold office, given the state of the country, the many ways they screw up our wealth and government functions, and their inability or non-desire to step up and tell the truth.

1) One can really tell how inept our current politicians are by looking at how incompetently they operate government functions. According to a recent Social Security Administration (SSA) inspector general audit report, there are 6.5 million active Social Security numbers on file that indicate the owners of those numbers are over 112 years old but there is no record of their death. Given the reality that the 2013 Census update shows that there are just over 6 million living Americans in the country who are over 85 years old, it is highly doubtful there are 6.5 million Americans who are over 112 years old, the numbers make no sense.

But it does make sense if you consider the very real possibility that these Social Security numbers are still active because they are being used fraudulently to rip off the SSA and the American taxpayer. It could be that the sons and daughters of deceased holders of these SSA numbers are still receiving the SSA checks of their dead relatives. It could be that illegal aliens are using the numbers to get benefits or get jobs using dead folks’ SSA numbers. It could be that organized crime is using the numbers to get disability or retirement checks fraudulently. Whatever the cause, you can be sure that the American taxpayer is being ripped off. 

A couple of comments here:

• Why did it take an auditor’s report to figure this out? 
• Is the SSA so screwed up that they had no idea that millions of people could be ripping off the system?
• Didn’t anyone there think to compare the characteristics of their list to the Census findings?
• According to Wikipedia, there are a grand total of sixteen Americans confirmed to be over 110 years old living in the country today? Didn’t anyone at the SSA think that might be an easy and important number to look up?

Unbelievable incompetence that could be avoided with some simple number analysis. Here is another simple idea: find out who those sixteen Americans are who are over the age of 110, identify what their Social Security numbers are, and then deactivate the remaining 6.5 million numbers that the inspector general identified and then sit back and see who yells? Whoever yells is likely a criminal in some respect who can then be arrested for fraud. 

The others will likely melt away once they know the scam is over, saving the American taxpayer a lot of wealth. But even simple plans like these are too much for the political class to grasp so expect the 6.5 million number to hang around for a long time.

2) According to a recent Washington Post article, the Pentagon also has a numbers problem in that it is unable to account for $500 million worth of military aid given to the Yemeni government. Given that the Yemeni government was recently overthrown it is highly likely that the half a billion worth of taxpayer funded weaponry is now in the hands of one of three terror groups operating in Yemen: ISIS, Al Qaeda, or Iranian supported terrorists. Half a billion dollars, a nice round number used to fund terrorists.

3) The Heritage Foundation recently did some real nice number analyses regarding the Federal budget which should shake up a lot of people who have an opinion but no data to support their opinion. Let’s start with the fallacy that the wealthy in this country do not pay enough in taxes. 

Using Federal government tax data from 2011, the latest data available, Heritage’s analysis found that:

• The top 10% earners in this country pay a whopping 68% of all Federal income taxes. 
• The top 1% of earners pay more than a third of all Federal income taxes (35%).
• Another way to look at the numbers is that the top 10% of earners earn 46% of the earnings in this country but pay 68% of all Federal income taxes, a tax to earnings ratio of almost 1.5, i.e. their share of taxes paid is 50% more than their share of earnings earned.
• The top 1% of earners earn 19% of all earnings but pay 35% of all Federal income taxes, a tax to earnings ratio of 1.84, i.e. their share of taxes is 84% higher than their share of earnings earned.
• The bottom 50% of earners earn 12% of earnings but pay only 3% of all Federal income taxes so their tax to earnings ratio is .25, i.e. their share of taxes is 75% lower than their share of earnings and their tax to earnings ratio is more than seven times lower than the ratio for the top 1% earners.

Given these numbers and results, it is pretty hard to make the case that the wealthy, higher earners do not pay their fair share of Federal income taxes. These numbers just reaffirm that we do not have an under taxation problem in this country, we have a Federal government over spending problem.

Another set of numbers to prove that there is not an under taxation problem in this country is to look at the wealth of Bill Gates, the wealthiest American, and the Federal government’s budget. The Federal government is spending money at the rate of about $10.4 billions per DAY. According to Forbes latest analysis, Bill Gates is worth about $78 billion. 

Rather than tax Bill Gates at a higher rate, let’s get crazy and say that somehow the Federal government confiscated everything he owned, about $78 billion worth of wealth. If we divide his wealth by the run rate of Federal spending we see that Gates’ entire wealth could operate the Federal government for just over seven days. His entire wealth, seven days, eight days tops of government operations.

If you just raise his tax rate, the increase in taxes collected would not even operate the Federal government for a few hours. We have a government that spends too much, we do not have a government that does not tax enough, the numbers do not lie.



4) Let’s dive deeper in the Heritage analysis, starting with Social Security numbers. The following numbers show the annual Social Security Administration cash flows over the years, adjusted for inflation, where a surplus means that in that year they collected more in Social Security taxes than what was paid out and deficit years means more was paid out than what was collected in Social Security taxes:

INFLATION-ADJUSTED DOLLARS (2014)



Source: Social Security Administration.

The numbers are pretty clear:

• Up until 2009, the cash flow of the SSA was positive, i.e. it collected more in Social Security taxes than what it paid out in Social Security benefits, a good thing. 
• But starting in 2010, that surplus turned negative with the deficit quickly growing to a whopping $79.7 billion in just five short years in 2014.
• While the SSA forecasts a slight reduction in that deficit.negative cash flow in the next few years, given the current set of rules, numbers and realities of the Social Security system, deficits will soon skyrocket, reaching an annual deficit of $337 billion by 2032, four times higher than it is today.

This is just more proof that the Social Security “trust” is an accounting and numbers trick foisted on us by the political class. There is no trust fund. There is no pile of cash or stack of gold bars and sheets of Google stock that can be used to offset the growing negative cash flow. The trust fund is an accounting trick that the politicians used to get access to Social Security wealth long ago, leaving us with growing Social Security deficit numbers that will very soon be unpayable under the current benefit scheme. The numbers do not lie even if the politicians do when it comes to Social Security.That will do it for political numbers today, more to follow tomorrow. Today we learned that dead people still get Social Security benefits, the Pentagon lost half a billion dollars worth of military gear, the wealthy already pay most of our taxes, and Social Security is quickly becoming insolvent. The numbers do not lie.