August 2016, Will The Center Hold? Is It Time To Start Ignoring Washington?

On a semi-regular basis, we run a discussion on whether or not “the center will hold?” In other words, what happens if and when Washington issues a law or a decree and the rest of the country simply ignores it, will the center hold? Never in my life have I seen the country so divided and struggling to push back on the over reaching politicians in Washington.

From gun control to school lunches to warrantless spying on citizens to Common Core education standards to health care to many other issues, states and individual citizens are more and more taking formal and informal action and telling Washington types to butt out of our lives, our wallets, and our freedoms. We have gotten to the point where state legislatures are actually passing legislation saying that they will not abide by certain Federal decrees and laws and making such compliance a crime within their state borders.

To review the many previous posts we have done on this question, enter “will the center hold” in the search box above to see the widespread resistance that is building up across the country. For the latest push backs against Washington, continue reading below and you decide: will the center hold?

1) The Obama administration made it very easy for Americans to get Federal government food assistance during the Great Recession which was probably a humane thing to go since so many Americans had lost their jobs. However, after the recession ended, one would have thought that the food stamp/assistance rolls would have declined since Obama bragged that he had saved the U.S. economy from destruction. 

However, from 30 million Americans getting food assistance at the start of the recession, the Federal taxpayer currently still provides over 45 million Americans with food assistance every month. Which means that the economy is not healthy, Obama’s bragging notwithstanding, or there is massive fraud going on that the Obama is doing nothing to stop.

But as we have found out in this series on “will the center hold,” often individual Americans and politicians below the Federal level are actually doing the right thing when it comes to common sense and taxpayer wealth. Nathan Mateer and Rachel Sheffield, writing for the Heritage Foundation, pointed out some of those instances of sanity:

• Seven states decided to reinstate work requirements in order to receive food assistance, a requirement that the Obama administration suspended at the onset of the Great Recession.
• One of those states, Maine, saw its food assistance rolls drop by a whopping 80% within just a few months after re-establishing its work requirements.
• Another of the seven, Kansas, saw its food assistance enrollment go down another whopping 75%.
• A study by Foundation for Government Accountability found that 60% of the Kansas residents who dropped out found employment within twelve months and that “their incomes rose by an average of 127 percent per year.”
• Within six months of putting its work requirements back in effect, Indiana saw its food assistance rolls drop by 68%.
• Indiana’s Family and Social Services Administration found that: “Nearly 5,000 Hoosiers who were receiving benefits in July are no longer receiving assistance because they obtained gainful employment and now have an income that exceeds eligibility standards.”

Another example where some state politicians are telling the Federal politicians and Washington bureaucrats to go pound sand and do the right thing, rather than the political thing, saving the taxpayers millions and millions of dollars without putting undue hardship on citizens. 

2) The American News website has our second example of the country telling the Federal government to get away. President Obama has often acted like a five year old when he did not get his way, that others in the world actually had a difference of opinion with him. Unfortunately, rather than act as a leader, Obama often has a temper tantrum and issues an executive order, under cutting the Constitution and our democracy.

Lately, Obama has discussed the distinct possibility that he might issue another executive order to place carbon limits on the country’s use of fossil fuels. But rather than rollover and just accept this tyranny, five state governors immediately spoke up and stated they will oppose any such order. The states pushing back include Texas, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Indiana, and Oklahoma.

Which gets us to the same question we continue to ask in this series of posts: what if Washington issued an edict, passed a law, or signed an executive order and the rest of the country ignored it? Would the center hold?

3) A recent article on the Fix This Nation website gets us back to food assistance and how the states are pushing back on Washington. Back on January 1, 2016, the state of Alabama had 49,000 of its residents signed up for Federal food assistance. Half a year later, after the state politicians reinstated a work requirement in most counties, that 49,000 number has plummeted to only 15,375 still on the program. This action has saved the taxpayers over $6 million.

Thus, we have another state that is bucking the trend of the Federal government by making common sense changes to its food assistance programs and seeing dramatic results without the backlash of people starving in the streets. Makes you wonder why Obama and the rest of the Washington political class are not doing the same thing if they had protecting taxpayer wealth as a priority, which they obviously do not.

4) Several months ago, the Obama administration put out a directive to all public schools in the country, strongly suggesting that all public schools in America allow transgender students access to the bathroom or locker room matching their gender identity on any particular day. This edict would allow teenage boys to declare that they are females anytime they wanted and gain access to girls' school restrooms, locker rooms, and teams.

This is obviously a huge social and moral issue, which was not an issue until the Obama administration decided to make it one. An issue this big should be part of a national discussion and the creation of appropriate laws on the issue once it is discussed and debated. That is how it is supposed to work in a free country. 

But apparently not on Obama's watch. As he is prone to do, if he does not get his way, he pouts, blames others for his lack of leadership, and tries to get around rules and laws with executive orders and these types of edicts. Well, as with other issues that states and individuals are pushing back on from an overreaching Federal government, many states and their governors are not going to go along with such dictatorial approaches to life and bathroom usage.

As of a couple of months ago, 11 states had already banned together to defy the Obama transgender bathroom “suggestion” in a joint lawsuit. Those states include:

• Texas
• Alabama
• Wisconsin
• West Virginia
• Tennessee
• Oklahoma
• Louisiana
• Utah
• Georgia
• Maine Governor Paul LePage
• Arizona Department of Education

A sample of the reasons for the pushback and lawsuit include the following:

• Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused the Obama administration of “creating new law outside the bounds of the Constitution.”
• Missouri Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder, wrote in an open letter: “The letter and its demands are an unconstitutional abuse of authority by your executive branch. It is a blatant attempt to change established law, which is a function reserved for the legislative branch by the Constitution. By threatening local school districts with the loss of federal funding, your administration is seizing local control from public schools while threatening the privacy rights of Missouri students. Further, the demands set forth in the letter directly violate the Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which states that those powers not delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people.”

As you can see, it appears that many local politicians and other Americans outside of the Washington area have a far better grasp of the Constitution than Obama and the other political cronies inside the Beltway. Just another example where this administration wastes its time on unnecessary and probably un-Constitutional activities where other major important issues of our times go unaddressed and are allowed to fester or grow worse.

That will do it for this round of “will the center hold.” State governments pushing back on Federal intrusions into their business and the freedom and liberty of its citizens, from bathroom policy to food stamp fraud and waste to the environment. We have a system of government that was established by the Constitution. But the Washington political class, and this administration in particular, seem to think that they can do whatever they want whenever they want in whatever aspect of their lives they so deem. 

But as we have pointed out dozens of times, the rest of the country is starting to resist this overreach. Which always brings us back to our central question: what if Washington issued a law, edict, or executive order and the rest of the country simply ignored it? That day seems to be coming closer and closer.

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:

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

To Build A Wall Or Not To Build A Wall? Part 2

One of the big issues of this Presidential campaign is whether or not to tighten up security on the Mexican border with Trump wanting to build a wall to prevent illegal immigration and other nefarious activities on the border. Somehow, someway, some people, mostly liberals and Democrats, think that having security on the border is a bad, racist thing to have.

Let’s take a look at what is going on down on the border and then we can decide who is right relative to the need for a secure border, Trump or the Democrats. Today will be Part Two of our discussion on the wall, a discussion that started with the following post from yesterday:

XXXXXX

1) Back in May, the Boston Herald reported on a violent crime from March 13, 2016 when four illegal immigrants assaulted an American man and his girlfriend. Three men grabbed the woman and dragged her away where they repeatedly raped her. One of the illegal immigrants stayed behind to beat up the woman’s boyfriend.

The boyfriend eventually got free of the one beating him and attacked the group raping his girlfriend, eventually having to defend himself from a knife attack: “I thought we were going to die. I really did,” the boyfriend stated. “And I didn’t care if I died as long as I could save her and get her out of there, that’s all I cared about.”

The sad part of this whole violent crime was that the four attackers had already been deported for previously having committed crimes in this country. But they managed to illegally re-enter the country to commit these heinous deeds in Framingham, Massachusetts. 

And as a result, at least two Americans are likely traumatized for a long time into their future: “I’ve lived (in Framingham, Massachusetts) my whole life and I never imagined anything like this could happen just walking down the street,” stated the boyfriend. “The worst part was I felt like I couldn’t do anything.”

2) But it is not just American citizens walking down their city’s streets that are being attacked. According to a report by Brittany Hughes of the MRCTV website, 140 cases of assault against U.S. custom agents have occurred in just a recent three month period. This data was published by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency of the Federal government. 

There have been 421 attacks so far in fiscal year 2016 which still has a couple of months left to go. This is a 17% increase over the same time frame in fiscal year 2015. The vast majority of these attacks have been directed at U.S.Border agents, the ones trying to make our borders less porous and more secure.

3) This past Fathers’ Day, Breitbart carried a very sad story on its website that chronicled the deaths of some Americans at the hands of illegal immigrants. The focus of the article was the families of those killed by illegal immigrants and their ire directed at House Speaker Paul Ryan, calling for his resignation for his stance and policies on illegal immigration.

Dan Golvach, whose 25 year old son, Spencer, was murdered by an illegal immigrant by a gunshot to the head while stopped at a red light: “I would invite Speaker Ryan to forsake spending Father’s Day with his kids to come down here to Houston and visit the place I will spend every Father’s Day for the rest of my life— my American son’s grave. This way Speaker Ryan can see first hand what pandering to the cheap illegal labor lobby means to Americans who can’t afford to put a security fence up around their house. The best thing Ryan could do to protect his family from what my family is experiencing is resign today. His policies are not only treasonous to us, they are also treasonous to any American that ever happens to be sitting at a red light like Spencer was. This wasn’t Syria or Iraq. It was the neighborhood I grew up in. Do your kids ever sit at red lights, Mr. Speaker?”

Billy Inman’s, whose 16 year old son was murdered by another illegal immigrant, stated in the article that it was a disgrace for Congressman Ryan to suggest he might sue Donald Trump if Trump was President relative to the suggestion that Trump might use executive authority to pause Muslim immigration: “He’s [Ryan] more upset with Trump than he is about what happened to our families. If Ryan sues Trump on the Muslim ban, we could sue him and most of our elected officials for not stopping illegal aliens from crossing the southern border.”

Inman’s son was killed when the car he was driving in was rear ended by an illegal immigrant driving over 60 miles per hour. This happened as the family was on their way to celebrate Fathers’ Day with a fishing trip. Inman and his wife were both knocked as a result of the accident, were put into intentional comas for several weeks for their own good and were unable to even attend their son’s funeral. 

Obviously, if the Federal government was doing their job that illegal immigrant would not have been in the country and would have not caused the death and trauma to this innocent American family: “I’d like for Ryan to try wearing my shoes for a week. I don’t think he’d make it a day,” Inman said in the article relative to the pain and sorrow he and his wife go through daily.

George Wilkerson’s 18 year old son, Joshua, was tied up, beaten, set on fire, and tortured to death by an illegal immigrant while he was on his way home from school: “Ryan is just one of Obama’s puppets. I don’t consider him a Republican. His tone is totally against Americans as far as I’m concerned. He’s been paid by the taxpayers, but he hasn’t done anything for them. He’s been there for two decades. He’s not doing his job. He’s not looking out for Americans. He’s doing more for foreign citizens than he is for his own American citizens."

Rapes of Americans, assaults on Americans, attacks on Border agents, and the unnecessary loss of life of American citizens because of the Federal government’s inability to protect us and enforce common sense and the current immigration laws. As we concluded yesterday, we also conclude today that maybe that wall might not be a bad idea after all, if one cares about the safety and lives of Americans.

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

To Build A Wall Or Not To Build A Wall? Part 1

One of the big issues of this Presidential campaign is whether or not to tighten up security on the Mexican border, with Trump wanting to build a wall to prevent illegal immigration and other nefarious activities on the border. Somehow, someway, some people, mostly liberals and Democrats, think that having security on the border is a bad, racist thing to have.

Let’s take a look at what is going on down on the border and as a result of a porous border and then we can decide who is right relative to the need for a secure border, Trump or the Democrats:

1) According to a recent article by Alex Pfeiffer, writing for the Daily Caller website, Mexican drug cartels are driving up the crime rate in major and minor American cities by flooding our cities with cheap, powerful heroin. An FBI report that was released back in May concluded that the spike in murder rates in more than 20 American cities was due to cartel heroin pushing: “I don’t know what the answer is, but holy cow, do we have a problem,” FBI Director Jim Comey stated at the time.

Additional findings from the FBI study found that:

• Chicago, the home of two rival Mexican cartels, the Sinola Cartel and the Beltran-Levya cartel, will likely finish 2016 with 550 homicides at the current rate of carnage.
• Las Vegas also has experienced a large jump in murders and it hosts three Mexican drug cartel branches.
• An analysis of the data found that there was a strong correlation between the number of drug cartels operating in a city and the increase in murders.
• Heroin usage in this country is at a 20 year high and the United Nations reports that heroin related deaths have increased by a factor of five since the year 2000.
• And that heroin flow now belongs to the Mexican cartels.

Given that thousands of Americans die from heroin overdoses every year, likely using heroin that traveled over the porous Mexican border, at least in this case it might be a good idea to tighten up that border given that Americans are dying as a result of a non-secure border.

2) And while murder rates have been going up for a little while in American cities, other violent crimes have also been going up. We have already covered this Obama administration foolish idiocy previously, but it bears repeating today, given our theme of this post. Elizabeth Harrington, writing for the Washington Free Beacon on July 14, 2016, reported that the Obama administration has released 86,228 criminal illegal immigrants onto the streets of America.

These 86,228 criminals had committed 231,074 crimes including sexual assaults, kidnappings, and murders. So even though the Feds had these people in custody, people that were both criminals and here illegally, most of whom probably came across our porous border, they still released these criminals onto the streets of America. Is it any surprise that crime rates are rising all over America as a root cause of a non-secure border?

These findings were exposed during an Obama administration official testifying in front of Congress. Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz reported during the Congressional hearing: “In the last year alone, ICE, Immigration Customs Enforcement, released—keep in mind these people committed crimes or were convicted of these crimes, they’re in our possession and we release them out into the public—19,723 criminal aliens, who among them had 64,197 convictions, including 934 sex offenses, 804 robberies, 216 kidnappings, and 196 homicide-related convictions.”

The Congressman also stated the heartbreaking obvious: “How do you look the parents in the eye of somebody who was murdered—their son or daughter—because the government said, ‘Well, you know, it’s in the best interest to just let them go back into the public here in the United States.’”

Tragically, Chaffetz discussed to the situation of Casey Chadwick, an American citizen who was brutally murdered by an illegal immigrant in June 2015. That illegal immigrant had been previously convicted of attempted murder in 1997. The illegal immigrant stabbed Chadwick to death five months after his release from prison, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 60 years in prison: “He should have automatically been deported back to his home country of Haiti after he was released from prison,” Chaffetz said. “But instead, he was released from custody because Haiti refused to take him back and we just accepted that.” And another American died.

3) But it is not just drug cartel violence and criminals we need to worry about because of a porous border and lousy immigration practices by the Obama administration. Bill Gertz, writing for the Washington Beacon on August 22, 2016, pointed out the recent government announcement that the drug cartels are working to smuggle Middle Eastern Sunni terrorists into the U.S. over the porous Mexican border.

The U.S. military’s Southcom Command recently issued an intelligence report via its J-2 intelligence organization that ‘“special interest aliens” are working with a known alien smuggling network in Latin America to reach the United States. The smuggling network was not identified. 

Army Col. Lisa A. Garcia, a Southcom spokeswoman, did not address the intelligence report directly but said Sunni terrorist infiltration is a "security concern”: “Networks that specialize in smuggling individuals from regions of terrorist concern, mainly from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, the Middle East, and East Africa, are indeed a concern for Southcom and other interagency security partners who support our country’s national security.”

While Obama and others like to downplay the illegal immigration problem, saying that these are just poor people looking for a better life, they are either lying or are out of touch with the reality uncovered by the Southcom Command, said one intelligence official of the Southcom report: “This makes the case for Trump’s wall. These guys are doing whatever they want to get in the country.”

But this Washington Free Beacon article is not the only report on the smuggling of potential terrorists into the country via Mexico. The Washington Times ran an article in June that an international alien smuggling operation in Brazil helped sneak illegal immigrants from Middle Eastern states to the United States, including an Afghan linked to a terror plot in North America. At least a dozen Middle East people reached the Western Hemisphere through this alien smuggling ring that facilitated travel to Mexico, the Times reported based on internal government documents.

That will do it for today but more discussion tomorrow on how the porous Mexican border is dangerous to ordinary Americans, be they addicted to and die from cheap Mexican heroin, the violence that kills Americans in our streets as a result of that heroin trade or they die or attacked from the Obama administration releasing known criminal illegal immigrants onto our streets, and how our porous border may get terrorists inserted into this country. Maybe that wall might not be a bad idea after all, if one cares about the safety of Americans.

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:

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

The Quickly Approaching Collapse Of Social Security

Having turned 62 last year and now a monthly Social Security check recipient, I am especially interested in protecting that revenue stream that flows into my bank account. Since I paid into the Social Security fund for almost 50 years, I would like to get a lot of that forced payment back as soon as possible. But I have had concerns about the fiscal health of the Social Security process for a number of years, actually proposing three fixes to the whole Social Security Ponzi scheme in my book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government.”

Why my concern? Two reasons: first, it is no surprise that tens of millions of Americans will soon be entering their golden retirement years and will be pulling down monthly Social Security payments which will put unprecedented financial pressure on the Social Security revenue stream and solvency. 

Second, politicians keep assuring us that the fictional Social Security Trust Fund will not run out of money until the 2030s. Not only do I not trust American politicians when they tell me anything but it is obvious to anyone who knows what the Trust Fund actually is knows that it is already bankrupt and empty, the 2030s claim notwithstanding. 

The Social Security process has been in a negative cash flow a situation for a number of years now, i.e. it has been paying out more than what it is taking in via Social Security taxes. And as the number of Social Security recipients increases over the next few years and the number of people paying Social Security taxes decreases, that cash flow deficit will only grow going forward.

This would be the time when the Trust Fund should kick in. But it has not kicked in since it has nothing in it and the cash flow deficit is being funded with general Federal government tax funds. Back in the 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson and the rest of the political class decided that it would raid the Social Security funds being set aside for future Social Security recipients to use for Johnson’s “Great Society” and the Vietnam War. Thus, they took the wealth and left future Social Security recipients with worthless IOUs from the Treasury Department.

How bad is the financial status of the Social Security process and the lies that the political class and government bureaucrats are telling us? David Stockman, who was the top economic advisor to the Reagan Presidency, recently analyzed the current fiscal situation of Social Security and his findings were not good, as he pointed out that reality in his article: “Funny Money Accounting—-Why Social Security Will Be Bankrupt In 10 Years.” The entire article from Stockman can be accessed at:

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/funny-money-accounting-why-social-security-will-be-bankrupt-in-10-years/

But can Stockman be correct? Wouldn’t the Washington politicians tell us what was going on and working on solutions? Ten years is not a long time as millions and millions of Americans enter their retirement years over those ten years. There can only be three reasons for their inactions:

1. Stockman is wrong and there is no need to get upset and issue a call to action to save Social Security.
2. The politicians do not understand the dire straits of the situation and/or are too inept to put together a solution.
3. The politicians are too busy worrying about their careers, self enrichment, and greed and could care less of fixing what is an economic lifeline for millions of Americans.

Let’s review Stockman’s analysis and research to see if we see which of these three options are most likely:

• The Social Security Trustees recently published their latest view of the whole system and said the trust fund now had life until 2034, a year later than they predicted last time around.
• Which is really nothing more than fancy accounting since the Social Security OASDI funds (retirement and disability) spent $859 billion in 2014 but only took in via Social Security taxes $786 billion, a negative cash flow of $73 billion.
• This was almost 10% of the revenue stream.
• From 2015 through 2026 even the Trustees predict that the OASDI funding mechanisms will run a total $1.6 trillion deficit.
• Since the Trust fund does not exist, this $1.6 trillion shortfall will have to be paid off by today’s kids and grandkids out of their future job wages and income.
• These same kids and grandkids will also be paying off the current $20 trillion in Federal government debt that the political class has accumulated for them, doubling that debt load in just the past eight years of the Obama administration.
• Stockman does a best case scenario where he deliberately and falsely assumes that the Trust fund does have real wealth in it but even with that assumption he forecasts that the trust fund goes dry in 2026, not 2034, an event that would theoretically require an immediate 33% cut in all Social Security payments to align revenues coming in with checks going out.
• According to Stockman: “In short, the latest untrustworthies report amounts to an accounting and forecasting house of cards that is camouflaging an impending social, political and economic crisis of a magnitude not seen since the Great Depression or even the Civil War.”

Nasty business here, financial hardship for those depending on Social Security in retirement and financial hardship for those still in the workforce who have to pay more and more of their hard earned dollars to support the negative cash flow of the system. This is money that will not be spent on vacations, retail purchases, movies, business start ups, etc., money that is not available to grow a robust economy. Just a massive redistribution of wealth from the young to the old.

But is Stockman right, are things really this bad? He proves his point by looking at the numbers and showing that the Washington bureaucracy is making such outlandish assumptions in their cover up of Social Security’s ailing ways as to be almost criminal:

• Stockman does agree with the Trustees’ estimate on how much the Federal government will have to pay out for the Social Security system in the next 12 years to cover payments and administrative costs.
• This outgo is expected to be $15.5 trillion and is needed to cover the number of Social Security beneficiaries that will grow from 59 million to 79 million over the next 12 years.
• He even agrees with the Trustees inflation assumption of between 2-3% a year which has been the historical run rate since the year 2000.
• However, his first major disconnect is with the Trustees’ assumption that there is currently $2.790 trillion sitting in this hypothetical trust fund, money that he calls pure “confetti:” "In truth, there is nothing there except government accounting confetti. This figure allegedly represents the accumulated excess of trust fund income over outgo historically, but every dime of that was spent long ago on aircraft carriers, cotton subsidies, green energy boondoggles, prison facilities for pot smokers, education grants, NSA’s cellphone snoops, space launches and the rest of Washington’s general government spending machine.”
• But now the math gets really crazy. Given there is nothing in the trust fund of value, the Trustees assumed that this nothing will earn $1.2 trillion in interest income over the next 12 years.
• Let’s get crazier. This $1.2 trillion in interest computes out to an interest rate of 3.5% a year, a number that no one in the world is earning on interest income. For example, even a 10 year Treasury bond is paying out at a rate of only 1.4% today, far less than half of the interest rate that the Trustees assumed they would get and they do not even have a an asset to gain interest on.
• But the most crazy assumption relative to all of the Trustees’ assumptions is yet to come. They assume that the national economy, the GDP, will grow at an annual rate of 5.1% every year for the next 12 years.
• Given that the long term annual national growth rate is just over 3%, and only 2.8% since 2008, there is likely to be at least one recession in the next 12 years, and the attainment of 5% annual growth in a single year rarely happens, this assumption is laughable, it is what Stockman calls the “skunk in the woodpile.”
• But they have to make this wild assumption in order to grow the economy and thus the Social Security revenue stream to meet their phantom 2034 goal for the non-existent trust fund.
• Stockman’s following chart shows that the Trustees are assuming that for the next twelve years we will have the longest non-recessionary period in the history of the country, 207 months, i.e. not going to happen:

• Stockman goes on to point out that there is likely severe deflationary pressure building through the world’s economy that will reduce, not grow nations’ GDPs in the future, putting more pressure on the Social Security revenue stream.
• By using the 5.1% vs. the more realistic but probably too high 2.8%, the Trustees end up adding an incremental $7 trillion to the U.S. annual economy which mathematically solves a lot of shortfall problems but is totally unrealistic.
• This is what Stockman calls "goal forecasting" where you start with an answer you need and work backwards to adjust the math assumptions to get you to that desired end answer, even if the resulting assumptions are ridiculous.

You get the idea, please go to the link above for a more in depth look at Stockman’s logical and sane analysis. But his analysis, simply using the Trustees numbers proves that no matter how you cut the data, no matter how you squeeze the assumptions, the government lied when it claimed to keep calm, everything is cool until at least 2034. 

The system is hurtling towards insolvency, it is now and will be forever more in a negative cash flow situation, the Trust Fund does not exist but is earning non-existent revenue on a non-asset, and the economic growth rates needed to keep thing in somewhat of a balance are ludicrous. 

As a result of this gross fiscal mismanagement going back to the 1960s and the Johnson administration, retirees are likely to get shorted what they were promised from the Social Security retirement fund that they diligently and legally paid into for decades. And that shortfall will either have to be made up by new, onerous taxes on our kids and grandkids or those in retirement are looking at a hefty monthly payment reduction.

And nobody, absolutely no one in Washington today or on the campaign trail has a plan. Or the attention span, to start addressing this dire problem. Which leads us to conclude that our third assumption above, “The politicians are too busy worrying about their careers, self enrichment, and greed and could care less of fixing what is an economic lifeline for millions of Americans,” is the reality of today.

To see our proposed changes to save Social Security, please go to www.loathemygovernment.com where you can pruchase our book, “Love My Country, Loathe My Government: Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom and Destroying The American Political Class.”

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