Reflections From a Murky Pond

Certain sorts of people are quite angry that GOP hopeful, Gov. Rick Perry called Social Security (SSI) a Ponzi scheme. Yet, despite their claims, SSI bears a great resemblance to a Ponzi scheme.

It’s Not Illegal When The Government Does It?

Most, though not all, of the arguments against Gov. Perry’s characterization of Social Security as a Ponzi scheme have their only objective basis in legalism and semantics, not factual analysis of the systems in question or their respective function.

The Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) defines a Ponzi scheme as:

A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of engaging in any legitimate investment activity.

Fraud?

Fraud is by definition wrongful or criminal deception. Since the creation of SSI and all the changes to it since its inception were done through the law’s fiat, it can’t be fraudulent from a legalistic standpoint. There’s been a great deal of deception and disinformation about SSI’s solvency, independence from the government’s general fund, and trust fund operations over the years though.

As a matter of legality and semantics SSI doesn’t meet the fraud requirement of being a Ponzi scheme.  From an ethical standpoint however, the matter is in some doubt.

Promise Of High Returns

This is one point where SSI absolutely fails to meet the standards for being a Ponzi scheme. Social security doesn’t claim to generate high returns for it’s “investors” because the government doesn’t need to lure in new investors. Participation is mandatory and the rate of “investment” is completely controlled through force of law. The government has absolutely no need to lure anyone in.

Payment Structure

While SSI has “investments” they’re of limited return and 100% of them are in IOUs from the federal government, meaning that each new generation of forced investor is paying for the returns for the previous generation and all the taxpayers are making up the difference as needed.

Given that returns to existing investors are from funds contributed by new investors and there’s a certain lack of honesty in how SSI’s trust fund interaction with the federal government’s general fund is portrayed, there’s little functional difference on this point between SSI and a Ponzi scheme.

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What it boils down to is that SSI is what the average private sector fraudster wishes that they could turn a Ponzi scheme into. The real differences between the two things are all a result of the government being the promoter of the scheme in case of Social Security.

Globalism and “cultural cross-contamination” sometimes make it hard tell what you’re looking at when you see an image without surrounding context. Take the scene below for example:

The subjects, setting, and weaponry in evidence make it nigh on impossible for one to tell of these are a detail “soldiers” in Sudan or a posse of “souljas” in Oakland, CA. Admittedly though, their general cleanliness and the lack of graffiti and “tags” on the building leads me to believe that this is in Africa instead of California. 😉

Either way though, the one with the jacket and shades is seriously “pimpin!” 😆

The goals, hopes, prayers, and dreams of men are as much a weather vane of their worth and character as their actions. This is especially true of those men who make their living their livings via words rather than deeds, such as Glenn Beck and Al Sharpton.

Comparing The Dreams of Beck and Sharpton

The image above pretty much sums it up, although we can’t really compare the two without running afoul of political correctness. Judging them each by the exposed content of the characters would be decried as racist if we didn’t lower the bar of our expectations and judgement for Sharpton.

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OK, to be heartlessly fair, the hopes and dreams of Glenn Beck and Al Sharpton are actually quite similar. Both are media pundits and demagogues and both merely hope and dream of continued wealth, fame, and relevance.

Also, I personally have found both of them to be painful to listen to for any length of time, Beck due the histrionics his delivery and Sharpton due to base evil of his content.

It’s now been a decade since America was attacked and violated on 9-11-01 by Muslim Terrorists. For ten years we’ve defended ourselves against the Jihad and brought death and destruction to our savage foreign enemies and their cultists insinuated within our borders.

But it’s also been ten long and painful years during which Americans have had to defend themselves over the objections and efforts of those forces within our country who hate the land they’re allowed to live in so virulently that they sided with and continue to side with and lend aid and comfort to America’s Muslim foes.

It is America’s domestic enemies that pose the greatest threat to our nation and out children’s future. Creatures like George Lakoff and his wife are the real, clear and present danger to America and its long past time for Americans to treat them as such, with all that such treatment implies.

My wife, Kathleen, and I stood gaping at the TV as we watched the towers fall. Kathleen said to me, “Do you realize what Bush and Cheney are going to do with this?” We both realized very well.

— George Lakoff

That’s right; by Mr. Lakoff’s own admission, he and wife Kathleen Frumkin Lakoff’s immediate thoughts as they watched the terrorists destroy the World Trade Center was based upon hatred of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. What the Muslim Terrorists had just done and the deaths they had just caused was a distant secondary concern – if that, considering the Leftists’ views of the Americans who worked at the WTC.

This is what each and every American faces, the horrific fact that we’ve allowed our domestic enemies to live, prosper, and continue their clandestine war against our country from within.

It’s past time for we, the People to understand that and to understand that bullets in the heads of creatures like George Lakoff and Kathleen Frumkin will do more to secure our nation than any number of Hellfire missiles fired into Islamists’ camps half a world away, not but what we must continue to hammer the Islamists wherever they’re nesting.

Does that mean the Lakoffs should be killed? Personally, I don’t know; I haven’t yet had time to study the level of actual threat that they pose and such violence should be a considered response.

The real war for America’s future is here and it’s one that the people, not the government and the military must wage. We just have to remember two related facts: victory through force of arms is the lowest form of victory, and it’s foolish to not take the victory that you can get just because it’s not the one you wanted.

One of Obama’s main thrusts in his recent “Jobs Speech” was that Congress should pass the act right away; it was urgent as people are in desperate need of employment. Yet, while this reminder of the urgency of the situation was repeated throughout Obama’s speech, there were no signs of real urgency on his part.

If Obama wanted anyone to believe that he found it urgent, why hadn’t the The American Jobs Act been drafted and introduced to Congress through one or more of Obama’s Congressional allies on the day he gave the speech?

It been days since Obama’s speech and the Act still hasn’t been drafted and introduced. The The American Jobs Act is nothing but more empty Obama rhetoric and is no closer to being “signature ready” than the projects detailed in the Liberals’ Stimulus were shovel ready.