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American Political Orphan
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" Patrick Henry
The Obama administration is weighing how the government can encourage workers to turn their savings into guaranteed income streams following a collapse in retiree accounts when the stock market plunged.
The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are spearheading the effort…
BusinessWeek reports that the Treasury and Labor departments are asking for public comment on “the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams.”
In plain English, the idea is for the government to take your retirement savings in return for a promise to pay you some monthly benefit in your retirement years.
They will tell you that you are ‘investing’ your money in U.S. Treasury bonds. But they will use your money immediately to pay for their unprecedented trillion-dollar budget deficits, leaving nothing to back up their political promises, just as they have raided the Social Security trust funds.
This ‘conversion’ may start out as an optional choice, though you are already free to buy Treasury bonds whenever you want. But as Karl Denninger of the Market Ticker Web site reports: ‘Choices’ have a funny way of turning into mandates, and this looks to me like a raw admission that Treasury knows it will not be able to sell its debt in the open market—so they will effectively tax you by forcing your retirement money to buy them.’
This is just the latest chapter in what is developing into a war by the left on America’s seniors. All that class-war rhetoric about “the rich” ends up targeting seniors, who tend to have accumulated the most in savings and investment on average because they have been around the longest.
Gingrich concludes…
Congressional Republicans should introduce legislation to block the government from ever proceeding with anything like this. Call it the ‘Keep Your Hands Off My 401(k) Act of 2010.’
The White House on Friday announced a “summit on entrepreneurship” to build economic ties with the Islamic world, part of President Barack Obama’s outreach to Muslims.
The White House said it has invited participants from more than 40 countries over five continents for the April 26-27 conference in Washington.
“The summit will highlight the role entrepreneurship can play in addressing common challenges while building partnerships that will lead to greater opportunity abroad and at home,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
What kind of Charlie Foxtrot are you cooking up now Mr. President? How about some support for American Entrepreneurship?
Members of Congress give all sorts of reasons for retiring, but the reason that Democrat Evan Bayh gave is starting to sound awfully familiar. The two-term Senator from Indiana said he just couldn’t stand the partisan bickering in Washington any more.
“I’ve had a growing conviction that Congress is not operating as it should. There is much too much partisanship and not enough progress,” he said yesterday, announcing he would not seek reelection this Fall.
Let me see Senator Bayh, “Congress is not operating as it should?” Running up a 1.4 Trillion dollar deficit, Federal Debt over 12 Trillion dollars, Earmarks (AKA wasteful spending), waste, fraud and abuse at the hand of the United States Congress, is this the partisanship you are talking about? The Democrat majority is in charge and the American People are holding them to account. Get over it!
Organized labor may be putting their dollars behind an online effort to take down Tea Party groups and their “radical ideas.”
A new Web site, TheTeaPartyIsOver.org, has connections to unions, including the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
The American Public Policy Committee pays for the site, whose self-declared mission is to “prevent the Tea Party’s dangerous ideas from gaining legislative traction.”
The Tea Party Movement’s idea of lower taxes and smaller government doesn’t sit well with unions. Especially the unions that represents government employees.
Somehow the principles of our Founding Fathers have become ‘radical ideas.’
It’s amazing how the ‘statists’ want to portray our country’s founding principals as radical.
The U.S. Treasury and Labor Departments will ask for public comment as soon as next week on ways to promote the conversion of 401(k) savings and Individual Retirement Accounts into annuities or other steady payment streams, according to Assistant Labor Secretary Phyllis C. Borzi and Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary Mark Iwry, who are leading the effort.
According to the article, as of mid 2009 there was 3.6 trillion dollars in IRAs and 401(k)s. Thats a tempting sum to the Obama Administration and the Democrats when they are pilling up an unsustanable level of debt. They want to sieze it and convert it to annuities so that retires will receive “steady payment streams.”
Let me tell you what this is - it is an attempt to prevent the collapse of the Treasury market!
Forcing people into Treasuries as an “annuity” is exactly what Social Security allegedly is. Except that Treasury stole the money that was collected in FICA taxes and spent it!
Guess what? They’ll do that here too - you’re going to “invest” in Treasuries which of course are effectively a CALL option on the future taxing ability of the government.
Let’s see if I understand this. The government takes your IRA / 401(k) and gives you an IOU. Then they pay you back in inflated dollars in equal monthly payments until you die. Haven’t they done this already with the generational ponzi scheme called Social Security? I wonder if they have hired Bernie Madoff as a consultant?
But Obama’s problems are more than a question of style. There is doubt aroused on substance. He sets deadlines and then lets too many pass. He announces a strategic review of Afghanistan, describing it as “a war of necessity,” only to become less sure to the point that he didn’t even seem committed to the policy that he finally announced. As for changing politics in Washington, he assigned the drafting of central legislative programs not to cabinet departments or White House staff but to the Democratic congressional leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the very people so mistrusted by the public. Who could be surprised that the critical bills—the stimulus program and healthcare—degenerated under a welter of pork and earmarks that had so outraged the American public in the past?
U.S. investors overwhelmingly see President Barack Obama as anti-business and question his ability to manage a financial crisis, according to a Bloomberg survey.
The global quarterly poll of investors and analysts who are Bloomberg subscribers finds that 77 percent of U.S. respondents believe Obama is too anti-business and four-out-of-five are only somewhat confident or not confident of his ability to handle a financial emergency.
The poll also finds a decline in Obama’s overall favorability rating one year after taking office. He is viewed favorably by 27 percent of U.S. investors. In an October poll, 32 percent in the U.S. held a positive impression.
As the Obama administration marks its first birthday, there is no reason to shop around for the perfect present. What President Barack Obama needs most is obvious: a new political strategy
How’s that hope and change thing working out for ya?
Democrat leaders are now talking about actually bringing legislation that will raise our debt limit by $1.9 trillion. But we are told by the same Democratic leadership that they are going to get serious in 2010 about fiscal discipline. I guess along those lines, President Obama is expected to announce a bipartisan commission that will look for ways to reduce deficits in the future. Sounds like an appealing idea, but the devil’s always in the details in Washington, D.C.
The president’s commission, on close examination, actually looks like a guard dog with no bite. Looks like fiscal discipline but it could easily be ignored by Congress. Remarkably, the president’s proposal, as I have heard about it, is prohibited from recommending cuts in any discretionary spending. That will be about $1.4 trillion, and the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’ that’s completely off limits. And as many of us know, with the partisan bias and the structure of it, as reported, it’s likely this commission would just be an excuse to raise taxes.
Rep. Mike Pence R-Indiana
Typical of the Obama Administration, a presidential commission to reduce future deficits but prohibited from recommending cuts in discretionary spending.
Obama, all talk and nothing to show for it. Typical! Just typical!
The Most Corrupt, Dishonest Government of A Lifetime, It’s Not Going To End Well
Honest Leadership? How About Treason?
I have lived over a half century and never in my lifetime have I seen a government more corrupt than the one that is in power now. Obama, Pelosi, Reed are destroying our country in front of our eyes and we can do nothing! When a deliberate effort is made to destroy the very foundations of America we should call it what it is. Treason.
WASHINGTON, Dec 15 (Reuters) - The House of Representatives will vote on a short-term boost to the U.S. debt limit this week TO AVOID A GOVERNMENT DEFAULT and give lawmakers more time to try to cut the record federal deficit, House Democratic leader Steny Hoyer said on Tuesday.
READ - US GOVERNMENT ON VERGE OF DEFAULT ON IT’S DEBT
‘If we don’t pass it, here’s the guarantee….your premiums will go up, your employers are going to load up more costs on you,’ he said. ‘Potentially they’re going to drop your coverage, because they just can’t afford an increase of 25 percent, 30 percent in terms of the costs of providing health care to employees each and every year.’
‘Eventually You Run Out Of Other People’s Money’ - Thatcher
The president said that the costs of Medicare and Medicaid are on an ‘unsustainable’ trajectory and if there is no action taken to bring them down, ‘the federal government will go bankrupt.’
Mr. President, you are a fool! It is not health care that is the problem it is the insatiable appetite of the Democrat Party to SPEND! The bill is coming due and you can’t pay it. Now, today the United States Of America may not be able to pay their debt. It’s directly your fault. Actually it IS your fault!
In regard to your support of ‘Health Care Reform.’ Of course, thats what you Democrats are calling it. Do you know what it should be called? How about “The Destruction Of Health Care In America Act?’ Thats a more honest title. Don’t you think?
Go ahead,
Vote for the destruction of the best health care available in the world.
Go ahead,
Vote for massive taxes on the American People. We are already taxed beyond anything our Founding Fathers would have ever imagined. Why not more? What’s a Trillion dollars to you anyway? What’s wrong with a 12 Trillion debt, or future debt obligations of 56 Trillion dollars? Apparently it doesn’t bother you a bit.
Go ahead,
Vote for Death Panels.
Vote for criminal charges for not buying health care coverage.
Vote to have the IRS enforce your will upon the American People.
Vote against the Senior Citizens of the State of Florida.
Vote for the economic destruction of our economy.
Vote for massive unemployment.
The tyranny of King George would be more preferable to what you and your party are forcing on the American People.
Here’s a Prediction! If you vote for this bill, you will be fired on November 6, 2012
All House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wants for Christmas is healthcare reform.
The speaker told constituents yesterday that she wants to finish health reform as a “Christmas present” for the country.
“I’m hopeful that we will have a bill as a Christmas present for the American people,” Pelosi said, according to KCBS. “But we will have a bill and it will be soon.”
Hey Pelosi! The best Christmas present you could give the American People would be to resign.
Dick Morris and Eileen McGann explain the payoff to supporters of the Health Care Bill.
The American Medical Association (AMA) was facing a 21 percent cut in physicians’ reimbursements under the current law. Obama promised to kill the cut if they backed his bill. The cuts are the fruit of a law requiring annual 5 percent to 6 percent reductions in doctor reimbursements for treating Medicare patients. Bravely, each year Congress has rolled the cuts over, suspending them but not repealing them. So each year, the accumulated cuts threaten doctors. By now, they have risen to 21 percent. With this blackmail leverage, Obama compelled the AMA to support his bill…or else!
The AARP got a financial windfall in return for its support of the healthcare bill. Over the past decade, the AARP has morphed from an advocacy group to an insurance company (through its subsidiary company). It is one of the main suppliers of Medi-gap insurance, a high-cost, privately purchased coverage that picks up where Medicare leaves off. But President Bush-43 passed the Medicare Advantage program, which offered a subsidized, lower-cost alternative to Medi-gap. Under Medicare Advantage, the elderly get all the extra coverage they need plus coordinated, well-managed care, usually by the same physician. So more than 10 million seniors went with Medicare Advantage, cutting into AARP Medi-gap revenues.
The drug industry backed ObamaCare and, in return, got a 10-year limit of $80 billion on cuts in prescription drug costs. (A drop in the bucket of their almost $3 trillion projected cost over the next decade.) They also got administration assurances that it will continue to bar lower-cost Canadian drugs from coming into the U.S. All it had to do was put its formidable advertising budget at the disposal of the administration.
Retaliation
According to the article,
The only industry that refused to knuckle under was the medical device makers. They stood for principle and wouldn’t go along with Obama’s blackmail. So the Senate Finance Committee retaliated by imposing a tax on medical devices such as automated wheelchairs, pacemakers, arterial stents, prosthetic limbs, artificial knees and hips and other necessary accoutrements of healthcare.
Morris and McGann coin the phrase “suicidal Democratic congressmen” - You Bet! I’m stealing that for a new category. Sure hope we can reverse the damage to our nation wrought by the Democrats. We just received another nail in America’s coffin.
The Democrat and Republican Party have lost touch with the American People. They have become the political elite and We the People have become "fly-over country." I am not a Nazi, a terrorist, a member of the KKK, a racist, or a member of an angry mob. I'm not a birther, teabagger, truther or astroturfer. I do, however believe in the original intent of the Founding Fathers, the United States Constituton and the rule of law. I believe that Government should serve the People, not the other way around. I’m an American and conservative to my very core.
