Silence is Consent

If you don't speak up you accept what is happening. This site was born out of the mainstream media's inability to cover the news. I am just an American cititzen trying to spread the word in the era of FCC consolidation, post 9/11 Patriot Act hysteria, hackable voting machines and war without end. I rant and post news items I perceive to be relevant to our current situation.

All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
- Thomas Jefferson

Social Security is not broken and therefore does not need to be fixed

So Called Social Security Crisis (SCSSC)

Comments, questions, corrections, rebuttals are always welcome.

Monday, January 03, 2005
 
My Buzzflash style headline for this article:
Ex-Office of Special Plans liar and Iranian Spy, Ahmed Chalabi, stands next to Shiite leaders to help make their case that they are no longer influenced by Iran. "They also said that if their coalition gains power it would not demand the immediate withdrawal of American troops.." Bush says, "Mission Accomplished!"
Political coalition says it won't create an Islamic theocracy
"We have rejected the idea of a sectarian regime and we believe that Iraq is for all Iraqis." Appearing with Hakim at the briefing was Ahmed Chalabi, a secular Shiite and former exile who ranks high in the alliance slate of candidates. Chalabi said he had just returned from Tehran, where he told Iranian leaders that they must not interfere with Iraq's elections.
That is some funny stuff there!

Christian Hypocrisy or Would Jesus Do This or Theocracy Anyone?
Evangelical Leader Threatens to Use His Political Muscle Against Some Democrats
James C. Dobson, the nation's most influential evangelical leader, is threatening to put six potentially vulnerable Democratic senators "in the 'bull's-eye' " if they block conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.
One From The Reality Based Community
Iraq battling more than 200,000 insurgents: intelligence chief
"I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people," Iraqi intelligence service director General Mohamed Abdullah Shahwani said in an interview ahead of the January 30 elections.
Do You Know About Your Future AG?
Alberto Gonzales Revisited
I saw that the Washington Post has a soft profile piece today on the man soon to be the Attorney General, or head law enforcement officer of the United States, Alberto Gonzales. I figured it was time for another look at this guy.
News on the Iraqi Election:
Candidate name recognition doesn't appear very important, however
For security reasons, the actual names of most candidates on the 78 party or multiparty lists have so far not been released. This odd situation, in which the candidates are not known a month before the election, attests to how dire the political and security situation in Iraq really is.
This one goes under the heading: I Thought They Were Having An Election?
US ponders election pledge to Iraqi Sunnis
The Bush administration is considering reserving a few high-level posts in the next Iraqi government for Sunni Muslims, regardless of how well they fare in next month's elections, for fear that their exclusion could prolong the country's military and political turmoil.
Wouldn't it be better to wait until they could be legitimately elected? Let me make sure I have this right. Iraq is going to have elections on January 30th. They will not be able to know beforehand who is running and if the elections don't turn out the way the Bush administration likes they will change the results. Welcome to George Bush does nation building. More here, New Year and Elections...

News on our election:

Thom Hartmann
Dialing In For Democracy - Now Is Critical
Jeff Taylor is one of Vermont's three electors - representatives elected by the citizens of Vermont to vote for President of the United States. He and his two peers have joined the electors of several other states in signing resolutions asking their state's congressional delegation to protest the Ohio slate of electors.

"If they can have fair elections in Kiev," Taylor told me, "why not in Cleveland?"
The Free Press

Ten preliminary reasons why the Bush vote does not compute, and why Congress must investigate rather than certify the Electoral College (Part One of Two)

The presidential vote for George W. Bush does not compute.

By examining a very wide range of sworn testimonies from voters, polling officials and others close to the administration of the Nov. 2 election; by statistical analysis of the certified vote by mathematicians, election experts and independent research teams who have conducted detailed studies of the results in Ohio, New Mexico, Florida and elsewhere; from experts who studied the voting machines, tabulators and other electronic equipment on which a fair vote count has depended; and from a team of attorneys and others who have challenged the Ohio results; the freepress.org investigative team has compiled a portrait of an election whose true outcome must be investigated further by the Congress, the media and all Americans -- because it was almost certainly not an honest victory for George W. Bush.
And last but not least the latest debunking of the SCSSC:

Paul Krugman
Confusions about Social Security
Since the Bush administration has put Social Security privatization at the top of the agenda, I'll be writing a lot about the subject in my New York Times column over the next few months. But it's hard to do the subject justice in a series of 700-word snippets. So I thought it might be helpful to lay out the situation as I see it in an integrated piece.

There are three main points of confusion in the Social Security debate (confusion that is deliberately created, for the most part, but never mind that for now). These are:

* The meaning of the trust fund: in order to create a sense of crisis, proponents of privatization consider the trust fund either real or fictional, depending on what is convenient

* The rate of return that can be expected on private accounts: privatizers claim that there is a huge free lunch from the creation of these accounts, a free lunch that is based on very dubious claims about future stock returns

* How to think about implicit liabilities in the far future: privatizers brush aside the huge negative fiscal consequences of their plans in the short run, claiming that reductions in promised payments many decades in the future are an adequate offset
NY Times Editorial
The Social Security Fear Factor
In effect, the administration's plan would get rid of the financial burden of Social Security by getting rid of Social Security. The plan shifts the financial risk of growing old onto each individual and off of the government - where it is dispersed among a very large population, as with any sensible insurance policy. In a privatized system, you may do fine, but your fellow retirees may not, or vice versa.


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