Michael1942's Blog

This Title line at first glance conjures up a different idea than the actual story below.MA

Sean Williams 3 hrs ago

For better or worse, Social Security is the financial foundation responsible for supporting tens of millions of retirees, as well as millions of long-term disabled workers and the survivors of deceased workers. Of the nearly 63 million people currently receiving a benefit check, more than a third are being kept out of poverty as a result of the added income they’re receiving from the program.
Yet for as important as Social Security is, it’s also about to encounter its biggest speed bump since being signed into law back in 1935.
Social Security’s problems come to a head
Every year, the Social Security Board of Trustees releases a report examining the short-term (10 year) and long-term (75 year) outlook for America’s most important social program. Since 1985, it’s been warning that long-term revenue wouldn’t be sufficient to sustain the existing payout schedule, which includes assumptions for annual cost-of-living adjustments. Ongoing demographic changes that include the retirement of baby boomers, increased longevity, lower fertility rates, and growing income inequality, are adversely impacting Social Security.
According to the June 2018 report, the program is soon expected to begin paying out more money than it collects each year. The last time we saw a net cash outflow from Social Security was back in 1982. While these net cash outflows will be relatively small at first, compared to the $2.9 trillion currently held in asset reserves, they’re expected to grow in size by 2020 and beyond.
Based on the estimates of the Trustees, Social Security’s $2.9 trillion in asset reserves will be completely gone by 2034. Should lawmakers not find a way to raise additional revenue and/or cut expenditures by then, an across-the-board cut in benefits of up to 21% may await. That’s particularly worrisome, given that 62% of retired workers rely on their benefit check to account for at least half of their income.
Is Congress really the problem?
How has Social Security gone from being such a successful program to an outright mess? One postulation is that the federal government is to blame.
You see, the Social Security program has accrued close to $2.9 trillion in net cash surpluses since its inception, with nearly all of this amount being generated over the past 35 years. Put another way, the program has collected more money than it’s expended every year since 1983.
Where is this money? That’s the big point of contention. By law, these net cash surpluses are required to be invested in special-issue government bonds and, to a lesser extent, certificates of indebtedness. In return, the federal government gets access to $2.9 trillion in borrowing capacity that it can use for normal line items in its budget. In other words, Social Security’s Trust has $2.9 trillion in asset reserves, but not a red cent of cash in the vault, so to speak.
Some folks have called for the complete repayment of this borrowing, with interest, and have suggested that the Social Security program would be just fine if Congress complied with this request.
But is this correct? Has Congress pilfered $2.9 trillion (or more) from Social Security and put the program between a rock and a hard place? Well… no.
The federal government hasn’t pilfered a dime from Social Security
The fact is that Congress, despite borrowing $2.9 trillion from Social Security, hasn’t pilfered or misappropriated a red cent from the program. Regardless of whether Social Security was presented as a unified budget under Lyndon B. Johnson or as a separate entity (i.e., off budget), none of its funding has been conflated with normal federal spending.
What’s more, Social Security is already generating interest income from the federal government on its borrowing. As of Dec. 31, 2018, the $2.9 trillion in special-issue bonds and certificates of indebtedness were yielding an average of 2.85%. Since these bonds range in maturity from 1 to 15 years, there’s plenty of opportunity to take advantage of rising yields and adjust the program’s bond investments as needed.
Ultimately, Congress’ borrowing allowed Social Security to collect $85.1 billion in interest income for 2017, and it’s expected to provide $804 billion in aggregate interest income between 2018 and 2027. In other words, when opponents of this borrowing complain about the program not receiving interest, they’re simply not doing their homework.
Making matters worse, some folks want to see this borrowing repaid in full. Doing so would require the federal government to find $2.9 trillion in borrowing elsewhere if that happened. But more importantly, it would deprive the program of valuable interest income, pushing Social Security into the red very quickly. Cash sitting around in a vault would do no one any good as it’d be losing purchasing power almost every year to inflation.
Lastly, regardless of whether Social Security owns government-issued bonds or cash, it doesn’t change the asset reserves held by the program. It’s $2.9 trillion either way. To suggest that repaying these bonds would put the program on more solid footing is simply not correct, as it’d have no impact on the program’s total assets, and it would actually hurt its revenue-generating prospects.
Long story short, Congress is in the clear on this one.

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Is it possible that the Neer do wells are attempting to do their jobs?.MA
The Hill-Alexander Bolton and Jordan Fabian 1 hr ago
Frustrated Republicans say it’s time for the Senate to reclaim more power over foreign policy and are planning to move a measure Thursday that would be a stunning rebuke to a president of their own party.
GOP lawmakers are deeply concerned over President Trump’s reluctance to listen to his senior military and intelligence advisers, fearing it could erode national security. They say the Senate has lost too much of its constitutional power over shaping the nation’s foreign policy and argue that it’s time to begin clawing some of it back.
“Power over foreign policy has shifted to the executive branch over the last 30 years. Many of us in the Senate want to start taking it back,” said a Republican senator closely allied with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
They plan to send Trump a stern admonishment by voting Thursday afternoon on an amendment sponsored by McConnell warning “the precipitous withdrawal” of U.S. forces from Syria and Afghanistan “could put at risk hard-won gains and United States national security.”
The resolution also expresses a sense of the Senate that the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and al Qaeda pose a “continuing threat to the homeland and our allies” and maintain an “ability to operate in Syria and Afghanistan.”
It’s a pointed rebuttal to the claim Trump made on Twitter in December that “we have defeated ISIS in Syria.”
Speaking on the Senate floor, McConnell said his amendment “simply re-emphasizes the expertise and counsel offered by experts who have served presidents of both parties,” a subtle rebuff of Trump’s tweets from earlier in the day mocking his intelligence advisers as “naive.”
Trump stunned Republican senators Wednesday by lashing out at Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and CIA Director Gina Haspel after they contradicted some of his optimistic claims about the threats posed by North Korea and ISIS. The senior intelligence officials also angered Trump by testifying that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear treaty it signed with Western powers under the Obama administration.
Trump tweeted “the Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong!” The president added in a follow-up tweet about Iran: “Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!” Trump appeared to be responding to television news coverage that focused on how the testimony contradicted his views on global threats.
Exasperated Republican lawmakers quickly pushed back against the criticism, urging the president to show more restraint.
“I don’t know how many times you can say this, but I would prefer that the president stay off Twitter, particularly with regard to these important national security issues where you’ve got people who are experts and have the background and are professionals,” said Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.). “In most cases I think he ought to, when it comes to their judgment, take it into consideration.”
Thune praised Coats, a former senator, as “an incredibly capable, principled guy” who “is very committed to doing the right thing for the country.” Thune predicted that most Republican senators will vote for the resolution urging Trump to exercise caution in assessing troop forces in Syria and Afghanistan.
“It reflects the widely held view in our conference – again – you want to trust our military leaders when it comes to some of these decisions,” he said.
He added that “a number of our members” talk to the president on a regular basis “and have articulated to him that they think that the policies that currently he wants to employ with regard to Syria, for example, are not the right ones.”
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who has emerged as a high-profile counterweight to the president on foreign policy issues, said, “I have full confidence in our intelligence community and its leadership. They are highly sophisticated and capable, and I take them at their word.”
“Precipitous withdrawal from Syria would put our allies at risk and be detrimental to our allies in the region,” he added.
Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said “this is an intel community that the president has largely put in place.”
“I have confidence in them, and I think he should, too,” he said.
Coats told the Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that U.S. analysts believe “North Korea will seek to retain” its ability to deploy weapons of mass destruction and “is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and productions capabilities because its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to regime survival.”
The statement undercut Trump’s praise of a declaration made with North Korea last year pledging to normalize relations in exchange for the “denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
Coats also testified that U.S. intelligence does not believe that Iran is undertaking any “key activities” to produce a nuclear device. On the subject of ISIS, Coats warned that the group is planning a comeback and numbers thousands of fighters in Syria and Iraq.
Haspel warned that North Korea is committed to developing a long-range missile that could strike the United States and corroborated Coats’s testimony that Iran is still in compliance with the nuclear deal.
Trump and some of his supporters have long accused a so-called deep state of national security and intelligence officials of attempting to subvert his presidency. But one former White House official who worked on national security issues chalked up Trump’s reaction on Wednesday to his penchant to hit back at critics, no matter who they are.
“Trump is always going to respond to somebody who is going against him or who he thinks is trying to make him look bad,” the official said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re the intelligence community. It doesn’t matter if you’re the Agriculture secretary.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), another member of the Intelligence panel, praised Coats and Haspel as “great patriots” who “tell it like it is.”
“Sometimes facts are inconvenient,” Cornyn said.
“But they work for him,” he added, referring to Trump. “He ought to call them on the phone.”
Asked about Trump’s tweeted criticism, Cornyn said: “Just say no. No more Twitter.”
Trump has long disagreed with the intelligence community and the national security establishment on a long list of issues, especially engagement with Russia. That dynamic has caused resentments to fester.
“Whether there is merit to it or not, Trump views the Russia conversation as a direct threat to his legitimacy and he is very sensitive about it,” the former official said. “He’s not willing to give an inch on that.”
The hearings also struck a nerve among some of the president’s supporters, which amplified the issue on cable television.
Fred Fleitz, former chief of staff to national security adviser John Bolton, said Coats should be fired over his comments to Congress.
“I gotta tell you, I would let him go because of this and I’ve thought this for some time,” Fleitz said Tuesday in an interview with Fox Business Network’s Lou Dobbs, a Trump favorite. “I think Mr. Coats is a great guy, but intelligence is to inform presidential policy. It’s not supposed to undermine it. It’s not supposed to second-guess presidential policy.”
Fleitz also said the intelligence community should stop issuing an unclassified, public assessment of threats to the U.S. because it “undermines” Trump’s policies.
“This is crazy. This has to stop,” he said.
A turning point for many Republicans was Trump’s unexpected announcement on Dec. 19 that “we have won against ISIS” and he would order the withdrawal of 2,000 American troops from Syria. The next day, Secretary of Defense James Mattis announced his resignation, citing policy differences and his concern over the future of U.S. alliances.
Even before that, there was growing sentiment within the Senate GOP conference to constrain Trump’s power as commander in chief. Seven Republicans voted with Democrats on Dec. 13 for a resolution directing the president to withdraw U.S. forces from participating in the civil war in Yemen. It marked the first time the Senate successfully passed a resolution under the 1973 War Powers Act, which was enacted to constrain executive power at the end of the Vietnam War.
McConnell has tried to shift focus away from the differences between Trump and Republican senators on national security by highlighting divisions among Democrats over the resolution on Syria and Afghanistan.
“Democrats objected to a vote on this amendment, apparently because it would expose a rift among their membership. A division between those Senate Democrats who still subscribe to this vision for American leadership and their colleagues who have abandoned those principles at the urging of the far left – or are too afraid to take either position,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.
Democrats, however, were quick to pounce on Trump’s comments and draw a comparison to the president’s controversial joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin last year when he appeared to give equal weight to U.S. intelligence findings that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election and Putin’s categorical denial.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) accused Trump of undercutting U.S. intelligence officials. “It gives a great opening to our adversaries who can discredit our intelligence agencies, who can say: ‘Well look, even the president of the United States doesn’t believe his intelligence agencies so why should we believe what the intelligence community says about Russia’s intervention in our election? Why should we believe what the intelligence community has to say about Iran’s compliance with the nuclear deal?’ ” he said Wednesday.

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“No man, for any considerable period of time, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the truth.” *Nathaniel Hawthorne*

It is now well documented that our Commander in Thief is an inveterate liar and has a staff of purveyors of his ill advised and patently false statements. It is no longer practical to say TOTUS misspoke or TOTUS meant something other than what he has stated. We are in the grips of a news cycle that has pitted “real” news against the “entertainment” news that TOTUS prefers to believe since it serves his purpose. The “resident” seeks glory in the face of serious problems, affirmation in the face of information that contradicts his statements and has consistently attacked allies who in their roles as such know more about word affairs and their links between them. The one “ally” that has skated is Russia who is a major bad actor on the world stage. It is unfortunate that his “base” is unable see beyond his “reality show” rhetoric and actions since all of the poor decisions made by this administration affects them as well as the rest of the country. In plain words our current administration from top to bottom is comprised of radical thinkers whose sole objective is to further agendas that serve them and TOTUS at the detriment of the entire United States while being aided and abetted by the neer do well Congress.

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Associated Press•January 27, 2019
NBC News’ Tom Brokaw blasted for comments on Hispanics, apology

NEW YORK (AP) — NBC’s Tom Brokaw says he feels terrible that his comments on “Meet the Press” Sunday that Hispanics should work harder at assimilation “offended some members of that proud culture.”
The former “NBC Nightly News” anchor tweeted in response to a social media backlash to what he had said earlier in the day during a discussion of the proposed border wall.
On the show, Brokaw said that many Republicans fear the rise of a new constituency in American politics “who will come here and all be Democrats.
“Also, I hear, when I push people a little harder, (people who say) ‘well, I don’t know whether I want brown grandbabies,'” he said. “I mean, that’s also a part of it. It’s the intermarriage that is going on and the cultures that are conflicting with each other.”
The 78-year-old journalist said he’s been saying for a long time that Hispanics need to work harder at assimilation.
“They ought not to be just codified in their communities but make sure that all their kids are learning to speak English, and that they feel comfortable in the communities,” he said. “And that’s going to take outreach on both sides, frankly.”
Brokaw received some immediate pushback from another panelist on the political talk show, Yamiche Alcindor of PBS. “I grew up in Miami, where people speak Spanish, but their kids speak English,” she said. “And the idea that we think Americans can only speak English, as if Spanish and other languages wasn’t always a part of America, is, in some ways, troubling.”
The web site Latino Rebels and its founder, Julio Ricardo Varela, pointed out online that a 2015 Pew Research Center survey found that nearly two-thirds of Latinos in the United States were born in the U.S. Hispanics make up 18 percent of the nation’s population.
The National Association of Hispanic Journalists also tweeted that it voiced its concerns about Brokaw’s “inaccurate commentary” to NBC.
Pew also found, in a 2016 survey of young Latino adults, that 41 percent say that English is their dominant language, 40 percent say they are bilingual and 19 percent speak Spanish primarily.
Brokaw’s comments are both xenophobic and factually incorrect, Varela said.
“We as a community are creating the new America right before your very eyes, Mr. Brokaw,” the Latino Rebels web site said. “Sorry if it doesn’t fit your perceptions of what America should be like. That future is bilingual, bicultural, at times in English, other times in Spanish. Our community is defining this future. Not you.”
NBC News had no comment Sunday on Brokaw, who has served in something of an emeritus role at the network since stepping down as lead anchor in 2004.
On Twitter, Brokaw said that he’s worked hard to knock down false stereotypes and pointed out that all sides need to work harder at finding common ground. He said he believes in “dialogue not division.

OK, so a well seasoned newsman cannot convey his personal feelings without a producer and teleprompter which indicates to me that he is similar to TOTUS who when left on his own just blathers out more nonsense except TOTUS never apologizes.MA

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