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.

On Thursday, September 8, 2011 President Obama stood before a joint-session of Congress and read his “Job Speech” off the teleprompter. He and it received a lackluster response.

The response, such as it was, to Obama’s speech was to be expected. The members of Congress couldn’t be expected to pay too much attention to yet another of Obama’s campaign speeches.

And worse, it wasn’t even a well-crafted campaign speech, being little more than blame shifting, class warfare, excuses, and empty rhetoric. Talking point-by-talking point, it was little except an attempt to pander to and placate each of the disparate and antithetical voting blocks of serious note in the upcoming 2012 elections.

The stupid boy never learned that you can make excuses, blame others, and attempt to lower people’s expectations and rally them to your cause at the same time. A leader of men Obama isn’t.

As for Obama’s Jobs Plan, if one can dignify it is as such, dubbed The American Jobs Act – It is much like his speech, a disjointed aggregation of direct and indirect spending meant to pander to as many voters as possible with little or no cohesion between the points.

It’s Not My Fault! I Didn’t Do It! Blame The Old White Guys!

Some of the ideas stand a decent chance of providing some benefit and/or relief, but they only make up approximately $70 billion (15.6%) of the $447 billion “plan.” Another $62 billion (13.9%) is to be spent on restructuring unemployment benefits in a way they might improve people’s chances of either not losing their jobs or being able to get one again. $175 billion (39.2%) is just payroll tax breaks for workers. The other $140 Billion (31.3%) in line items are just retreads of the Stimulus, which failed to perform as touted the first time around.

The boy’s biggest problem is that the only “shovel ready” project out there is his political grave, and he’s doing a good enough job of digging it himself that he doesn’t need to hire extra help.

Between Obama’s speech and the outline for his “plan,” it’s patently obvious that Obama’s Job Plan is designed in its entirety to support the continuation of one job, his own – and, like all his previous mouthings, this one will likely fail as well.

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Keep your eyes open. Travel light but load heavy, and always put another round in the enemy after they’re down.

One piece of good news for America is that there is more and more evidence that there is little or nothing but bad news for the Liberals and their party of choice, the Democrats. Their days as a political force in our country are coming to a close.

This has happened because Obama, Pelosi, and Reid – and/or their handlers – gambled – in fact the went “all in” – on a big push for Statist measures and a neo-Socialist agenda and they lost, lost big.

All that they achieved was near-beggaring the nation, causing a Hooverian extension and worsening of the economic malaise, and waking up the American people, who then chose to take back their country and its government.

This week’s fight over raising the federal debt limit exposes a key weakness in the warfare-welfare state that has bestowed power onto the Democratic Party: Without an ever-growing share of the economy, it dies. Every vital element of the Democrats’ coalition — unions, government workers, government contractors, “entitlement” consumers — requires constant increases in payments, grants and consulting contracts. Without those payments, they don’t sign checks to re-elect Democrats.

Like it or not, Obama is not the new FDR, but the new Gorbachev: a man forced to preside over the demise of a political system he desperately wants to save.

Democrat champions in the punditocracy confidently predict that the future of the world’s oldest political party is bright. But in fact, the coalition that is the modern Democratic Party is doomed. Every pillar upholding its heavy roof is crumbling.

That’s the problem with going “all in” when you’re bluffing and have nothing to back it up. When you’re called, you lose it all. That’s what has happened to the leftists and their pet politicians.

Obama is now truly much like Gorbachev was then. His mouthings are just the rhetorical floundering of a lost and bewildered politician trying to be heard over the roar of lost faith in a failed model of government. Obama, figurehead, scapegoat, judas goat, or whatever for the Liberals and their Democrats, just cannot be heard anymore – and Pelosi and Reid aren’t even speaking at all.

Thanks to the stupidity of Obama, Pelosi and Reid they even lost the terms of the arguments. Under the new rules of engagement the arguments are now solely voiced in conservative American terms. Liberal and Progressive catch-phrases, terms, and dog-whistles have been cast onto the trash heaps of history.

Even if Obama is granted a second term as POTUS it won’t matter that much. Indeed, perhaps it’s fitting the America’s First Black President be the one who presides over the dissolution of Liberal and Progressive ideology as a political force in America.

In America we’re getting deeper and deeper into the 2012 election season, though one could argue that, with Obama installed as POTUS, we’ve been in it since January, 2009. Be that as it may, it’s now painfully obvious that we’re fully engaged in the next election.

Nothing lets us know that the 2012 election season is now in full swing more than Obama arranging a “nice” photo-op of him taking his family to church this last Sunday (July 17, 2011).

Dear Lord and MSM, Grant Me Reelection. I’m Entitled.

Yes, it was a pathetic attempt at courting Christians from a being whose personal theology is a matter of grave doubt, but it the sort of thing Americans have to come to expect from Obama.

Americans have to keep it firmly in their minds that Obama believes that the separation of Church and State is a one-way matter. In what passes for Obama’s and his followers’ mind the Church, other than the Cult of Obama, cannot be allowed to inform the law but the State can make use of the Church where, when, and how it sees fit.

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Keep your eyes open. Travel light but load heavy, and always put another round in the enemy after they’re down. Remember that we are each the Gods’ hands 😉

The very fact that America is in its current “Debt Crisis” and seeking to, once again, raise it’s own debt ceiling is an example of a willful and utter failure of leadership. Rather than behave responsibly, the politicians in Washington D.C. have chosen to continue to make America reliant upon foreign financial aid and to burden our children and our children’s children with crushing debt owed to foreign powers.

The above was Obama’s stridently voiced opinion when President Bush Jr. was POTUS:

The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure,” he said. “It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.

— Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), March 20, 2006

Then-Senator Obama then voted, along with 47 other Senators, against the proposed debt ceiling increase. The joint resolution ended up narrowly passing 52 – 48.

Since then, of course, Obama’s public opinion has rather dramatically reversed. Now he and his coterie seem to feel that not raising the debt ceiling would be a failure of leadership.

In January, 2011 the White House was questioned on this turnabout of position. The response from Obama’s mouthpiece, Robert Gibbs revealed quite a lot about Obama’s “character” and his “positions” on issues.

Asked about that quote – and vote — today, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said that it was important that “based on the outcome of that vote…the full faith and credit was not in doubt.”

Then-Sen. Obama used the vote “to make a point about needing to get serious about fiscal discipline….His vote was not necessarily needed on that.”

So Obama was against the debt ceiling increase when being so would have no near-term consequences that might affect his chances of keeping his job in the US Senate. One must presume that he is for it now for similar reasons since failing to raise the debt ceiling would definitely have near-term consequences – or so his cabal keep telling us – that would negatively impact his continued employment.

Unsurprisingly, this being an election year, Obama has further “clarified” his position on the matter and no longer believes that even token speeches of dissent or unneeded votes of conscience against raising the debt ceiling are appropriate.

Press secretary Jay Carney said that “the president, as David Plouffe said yesterday, regrets that vote and thinks it was a mistake. He realizes now that raising the debt ceiling is so important to the health of this economy and the global economy that it is not a vote that, even when you are protesting an administration’s policies, you can play around with, and you need to take very seriously the need to raise the debt limit so that the full faith and credit of the United States government is maintained around the globe.”

Don’t mistake either my point or Obama’s position. He was not “against it before he was for it.” His position has always been the same, to be elected and reelected. Obama, the Campaigner-in-Chief has no firmly held positions or agendas beyond that or, at least, none that supersede that self-centered and narcissistic core goal.

Like most Liberals Obama’s ideology falls by the wayside whenever pursuing it would force him to make sacrifices or put his personal circumstances at risk. Sacrifices are things that other people should be forced to make for the “greater good.”

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Keep your eyes open. Travel light but load heavy, and always put another round in the enemy after they’re down. 😉