Tag: Social Security

Violent Left strikes in California

Taking their cue from violent socialists in Brazil, Democrats in California are taking things to a new level.  Rudy Peters is the GOP candidate running for Congress in Eric Swalwell’s district.  On Sunday, Farzad Fazeli pulled a switchblade and attacked Rudy Peters at a campaign event.  Peters fended him off with a campaign sign until police showed up.

This is just the most recent incident.  A GOP campaign office in Wyoming was set on fire last week.  On Twitter, a Democratic Socialist activist threatened a mass shooting at a Trump hotel, saying he would take MAGA hats as trophies.  Democrats have amped up violent rhetoric against the Right and their attacks on police and ICE.  Ocasio-Cortez suggested that ICE is raping women at will.  Other candidates like Gillum have called for the abolition of ICE.  There has also been rhetoric encouraging socialist type revolutions.  The Left needs to call off the hounds and do their part to return to civility.

Democrat attacks GOP candidate with a switchblade in violent campaign season

Speaking of over the top rhetoric, there’s a Republican in the White House and a hurricane on the way.  You know what that means.  Leftwing media outlets didn’t even wait for the hurricane to hit before attacking Trump on his response.  Trump was attacked for suggesting the US response to Hurricane Maria was good.  The media is blaming Trump for the failures of the Puerto Rico government. They seem to forget the mayor of San Juan who was highly critical of Trump while her government failed to distribute truck loads of aid and refused to pay electrical workers.

How the media uses hurricanes to bring down Presidencies

A new study out shows that “non-criminal” illegal aliens who come here looking for work are not as “non-criminal” as everyone thought. Media and Democrats like to co-mingle legal and illegal immigrants in order to produce stats about how they are paying taxes, contributing to society, getting an education, etc.  But there’s a new stat out that shows the idea of the non-criminal illegal alien is a myth.

Illegal aliens come here looking for jobs.  At least that is a common argument used.  They are here to do the jobs Americans won’t, as others have commonly argued.  The problem is in order to have a job you have to have a social security number.  That’s why a new study is showing that about 39 million identity thefts involving social security numbers can be attributed to the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the US.  That’s almost 4 stolen social security numbers per illegal immigrant.

The thefts are much harder to detect now, thanks to Obama.  As part of his administration moves to help bring more illegal Dreamers into the country, he directed applicable agencies to stop sending letters to employers indicating if their employees had a name/SSN mismatch.  As a result, employers not subject to e-verify had no idea if their employees had bought their social security number on the black market.

39 million social security numbers stolen by illegal immigrants

 

Politifact bias check: Democrats and Nazis

Politifact has ruled on Don Jr’s claim that the Democrat platform was similar to the Nazi platform of 1930.  Their ruling?  Pants on fire.  How could it be anything else?  Politifact is frequently biased towards the Left.  In this case the result is no different and we give them an 80% bias rating in their analysis.  Let’s examine it.

First, for reference, here is our fact check of Donald Trump, Jr’s claim.  Unlike Politifact who skimmed the Nazi platform, we went point by point and showed the similarities.  Politifact started by restating Don’s claim incorrectly, then pointing out all the ways he was correct, and finally by splitting hairs and using technicalities to get to their rating.

What Donald Trump, Jr said: He didn’t say the Democrat platform was Hitler.  He didn’t say they were identical.  In fact, the points he made are really what Politifact should be looking into.  People keep calling the Republicans Nazis and saying that Trump only won because of Nazi support.  What quoted was this:

“You see the Nazi platform from the early 1930s … look at it compared to the DNC (Democratic Party) platform of today, you’re saying, ‘Man, those things are awfully similar’ to a point where it’s actually scary. It’s the exact opposite of what you’ve been told.”

What he also said was “I’ve been out hearing the left talking about all these things, fascism, Nazism on the right, and when you look at the actual history of how these things evolved, and when you actually look at that platform versus the platform of the modern left, you say wait a minute, those two are really heavily aligned and, frankly, contrary to the right.”

Here’s the actual interview.  Politifact links to it, but it’s worth watching because the context of his statement is that the Left are the ones out there calling Republicans Nazis, and it’s simply not what lines up with the facts.

Politifact then goes on to ironically quote an academic historian who says Democrats have absolutely nothing in common with the Nazi party.  This is at the top of the article, not halfway down where they admit there were many similarities.  But then they make their first huge error.

Politifact argues that Hitler did not run on the Nazi platform and that the platform was a compromise, not what Hitler wanted.  But he didn’t say the Democrats were Hitler.  He said their platform was like the early Nazi platform.  At this point Politifact is no longer factchecking what Donald Trump, Jr actually said.  They are now factchecking a caricature they have created based on their misunderstanding.

“Some points sound similar”

Here’s the funny part of the Politifact article.  They name six points in the Nazi platform that are, just as Donald Trump, Jr said, similar to the DNC platform.  We found more, but Politifact is charitable to the DNC.  In fact, they go on to say they feel that ending war profiteering, nationalizing certain corporations, ending land speculation, and oppression of media that is contrary to the state are not goals of the DNC.  But even if we leave Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez out of this, these were high priorities of the Obama administration.

In fact, many of the new regulations after the 2008 crash were to prevent land speculation, Obama nationalized portions of the auto industry, and Democrats have spent the last 60 years fighting against war profiteering. Dinesh D’Souza who made the film Don Jr went to see was pardoned by the Trump administration after Obama threw him in jail for a slap on the wrist campaign finance crime.

In Politifact’s summation, they admit that there are similarities.  They try to say that of the six similarities they will admit to, they are also in the Republican platform.  Although, according to their article only half of those six are similar to Republican platform points.  Then rather than ruling half true, partly true, or even mostly untrue, they slap a pants on fire rating.  We believe Donald Trump, Jr’s claim deserves a half true rating at the bare minimum.  When you throw in the diversity of DNC candidates who will affect future platforms, including rising star Ocasio-Cortez, this claim would be mostly true if it weren’t for the technicality that this next year’s platform hasn’t been written yet.

Democrats vs. Nazis

Donald Trump, Jr is in hot water with the press after stating that the Democrat platform is closer to early Nazi-ism than the alt-right.  When reading the early Nazi platform, it’s actually not quite that simple.  There’s a mixed bag.  Points 6 and 7 sound a little like Trump’s immigration policy, except of course that they were predicated on pure German blood being a requirement for citizenship.  Trump hasn’t gone anywhere near that, even if the alt-right has and Liberals imagine Trump has.  But let’s look at the meat of the Nazi party platform.

Point 12 ended any sort of corporate profiteering from war. Point 13 demanded the nationalization of all corporations.  Point 14 calls for profit sharing in large enterprises.  Point 15 demands “old-age pension schemes” developed by the government.  Point 16, the confiscation of large department stores to be redistributed to small tradesmen and greater consideration given to small business owners.  Point 17 requires the abolition of ground rent and land speculation.  So far, that sounds pretty much like the Democratic Socialist platform.

Point 20 in the Nazi platform is free education.  Point 21 deals with healthcare mandates.

Point 23 calls for the banning of media that “violate the public interest” or has a “destructive effect on our national life”.  Think about that as Facebook and Twitter delete or block accounts based on political content.  Or how about the fact that Trump Jr was making the comments in response to Dinesh D’Souza’s latest documentary.  D’Souza was pardoned by Trump this past year after the Obama administration had gone after him for violations of campaign finance laws.  D’Souza was hit with a monetary fine, eight months in a “community confinement center” and “therapeutic counseling sessions” on the trumped up charges of offering to personally reimburse political donors. He plead guilty to avoid prison.  Just writing that feels very 1984ish.

Point 24 of the Nazi platform demands freedom of religion so long as that religion does not endanger the existence of the State or offend decency and morality.  They go on to rule out Judaism because of the “Jewish-materialistic spirit” and state that revival of the nation must be based on “public interest before private interest”.

Social Security?  Free tuition? Nationalization of large corporations? Confiscation of Wal Mart in favor of small businesses?  Banning media that violates the public interest?  Limited freedom of religion if it is harmful to the State or decency and morality?  Healthcare mandates?  Outlawing housing speculation and rents?  Tell me these are not the dreams of the Liberal movements in America today.

You could argue that there are those in the alt-right whose racism is comparable to the Nazi party.  But when it comes to the goals and policies of the Nazi party platform, they are definitely more in line with the goals and platform of the Democratic Socialists.  Ocasio-Cortez and those who see eye to eye with her want to abolish Capitalism in favor of a State controlled economy.  Just like the Nazis.

Trump Jr says Democrat platform closer to Nazi platform

Finland Needs Babies

Socialism is all fun and games until you run out of other people’s resources. In Venezuela things were going great so long as the state could fund itself by selling oil. Great of course being a relative term. If you’re a relative of someone in the government, then things are great.

In Finland, they are running short of a different commodity: babies. Finland’s social system is similar to US social security in that it is dependent on having a high taxed worker to non-working consumer ratio. In the US, the conundrum we have run into is that Social Security was stable when there were at least three workers for every retiree. By 2030 we expect to see two workers per retiree and Social Security will run out of money.

Finland is facing the same dilemma.  They are running out of workers to fund the free-loaders.  They are not making enough new workers to keep the socialist ponzi scheme going. This is driving them to adopt new policies such as increased maternity leave. They are even rethinking their progressive stances on family values. Of course, when the purpose of having more babies is to support the welfare state, this strategy can backfire. Additional maternity leave means more labor is needed to fill those gaps.

While some have suggested that nationalism is the barrier to admitting more immigrants, I have a feeling the true barrier is the fear of adding more dependents to a broken system. After all, in a state built on social safety nets and transfer of wealth who wants to volunteer to go there and work to pay for it all?

Margaret Thatcher said that the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.  In Finland, they have simply run out of other people.

 

Fake News Alert: Social Security

Welcome to 2016.  It’s the year that Dan Rather called on the media to be more biased and Brian Williams complained about fake news. And of course, both were praised and accorded credibility on the left for their laments.  Fake news is the thing right now.  It’s why Trump won, it’s how Russia infiltrated the brains of the electorate and forced them to vote for Trump, and it is defined of course as right wing sources only.

Just as there is an Alt-Left, there is left wing fake news.  Usually it’s unrecognizable because it comes in the form of mainstream media publication.  A great example came on December 9th when Ethan Wolff-Mann (yup) wrote an article for Yahoo! Finance about how Republicans are going to massively cut Social Security. Rather than citing what was proposed, Wolff-Mann cited Center for American Progress’s twitter account as his source.

According to Wolff-Mann, and Talking Points Memo who he also cites, the Republican proposal will drastically cut benefits for the poor and runs contrary to a bi-partisan effort to save Social Security through a payroll tax increase for those under the Obama threshold of what constitutes being “rich”.

Meanwhile, the actual bill is not quite as drastic and gloomy as the “press” reports.  The Sam Johnson plan, which is actually different from the Paul Ryan plan, would increase the retirement age for younger workers and adjust how inflation is calculated for benefits. Aside from that, his proposal should be a dream for liberals.

The Johnson plan would reduce benefits for wealthy retirees.  It includes means testing which is basically a tax on the wealthy.  It also takes away cost of living increases for the wealthy. Johnson, who calls his proposal the start to a fact-based conversation, also calls for benefit increases for some.

No solution has been determined for Social Security yet.  In the end it will likely be an adjustment in inflation, an increase to the retirement age, but it also may include private accounts which can earn far more and can’t be cut by the government. For all the fear mongering, we are far from a final solution for Social Security.

Perhaps a better headline would have been “Wolff-Mann Scares Seniors”.