I Would 100% DO THIS. !🎇🎆

It does seem like this is the way we’re headed.

SO MUCH FOR SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE.

Which is the principal that made white peoples come to this continent and write the declaration of independence and then the constitution in the first place.

Just saying.

When the mace

Doesn’t smash your face

That’s amoreè

Just This !

Ne pas prendre la vie trop au sérieux... Un après midi entre amis...

Important. Please understand how your own government actually works people.

Common Dreams

PBS Mirrored GOP Lies on Social Security and the Debt

National news media often broadcast misinformation when discussing the debt of the United States government, erroneously targeting Social Se

By Frederick H. Decker

Common Dreams

Nov. 29, 2023

National news media often broadcast misinformation when discussing the debt of the United States government, erroneously targeting Social Security as the main culprit whether intentionally or from genuine ignorance.

The coverage of the federal debt by news media generally considered credible often mirrors, unfortunately, the falsehoods heard from Republican lawmakers in blaming Social Security as a major driver of the federal debt. Such misleading news coverage was embedded in a recent segment aired during the week of Thanksgiving on the PBS NewsHour, which is an hour I watch regularly to typically be informed by sound journalism. But in the segment at issue here, I witnessed misinformation broadcast to the public that could shape public opinion into thinking, quite erroneously, that Social Security needs gutting because it is the culprit increasing the federal debt. It isn’t.

This particular segment on the federal debt on PBS NewsHour was introduced on Tuesday November 21 by coanchor Amna Nawaz stating how the “U.S. government remains open this Thanksgiving week, thanks to a temporary funding deal Congress passed last week.” But when that temporary funding starts expiring in January, Nawaz added, “conservatives are signaling they won’t pass another funding deal without addressing a bigger issue, the swelling U.S. national debt.”

Then coanchor Geoff Bennett and correspondent Lisa Desjardins, standing before a screen with varying charts, discussed the growing interest paid on the federal debt. As Desjardins put it, “just the interest on our debt is so large [in the past year] that it is almost [the size of} the entire Department of Defense budget.” That statement may be true, but that was not the punchline of the segment.

Social Security hasn’t reduced available general revenue nor been the reason why politicians are not funding programs for younger constituencies.

The NewsHour segment ended mirroring the Republican Party’s mantra that Social Security is the major driver of the federal debt. As Desjardins concluded “the three largest drivers of the debt are in reality” Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the debt, with each in the chart displayed indicated as accounting respectively for 21.2%, 12.9%, and 10.5% of total federal expenditures. Desjardins added, “Really what’s happening here is Congress is not addressing the big drivers of the debt at all.”

In a recent piece with misinformation embedded in its title alone, “Why We’re Borrowing to Fund the Elderly While Neglecting Everyone Else,” columnist Catherine Rampell also implied that borrowing to fund Social Security benefits will, as she wrote, “continue to crowd out future spending obligations in years ahead” on programs for the young like “pre-K, or child care, or paid parental leave, or a more generous child tax credit.”

One problem in such depictions exemplified by the NewsHour and in Rampell’s article is that Social Security, specifically, is funded almost exclusively by its own revenue source. Not by borrowing, as Ms. Rampell implies without providing supportive evidence for that contention (because there isn’t any). Nor funded by general revenue as likely many believe when seeing typical charts on federal spending (like that shown in the segment aired on PBS NewsHour) that include Social Security expenditures, which are not at all funded by general revenue but, rather, by its separate targeted payroll and income taxes.

Actually, as I have written about previously, Social Security is today the entity owning the most debt, $2.7 trillion in Treasury securities (Monthly Treasury Report, Table 6, Schedule D as of October 31, 2023). More than the two foreign governments owning the most U.S. debt, Japan today owning U.S. securities valuing $1.1 trillion and China with under $1 trillion.

Surpluses in Social Security revenue by law have to be invested in U.S. securities. And revenue surpluses have over the years been the norm in the program. Thus, Social Security for years, in essence, funded the debt with its surplus revenue, not caused it.

Social Security hasn’t reduced available general revenue nor been the reason why politicians are not funding programs for younger constituencies as Ms. Rampell alludes to in her piece. Tax cuts during the Trump and Bush administrations, however, did help do that. Growth in deficits and debt, as analysis by the Center for American Progress indicates, has largely been driven by those tax cuts. Tax cuts reducing general revenue applicable to programs like the earlier expanded child tax credit that, before expiring, lifted more children out of poverty.

The Social Security program has nevertheless, according to reports by the Board of Trustees overseeing the program, recently incurred shortfalls in its dedicated revenue stream. In 2022, a 4% shortfall noted in the trustees’ current report (Table II.B1, page 7). And those recent shortfalls have been met simply by just cashing in some U.S. securities the program acquired over the years with revenue surpluses.

But true enough, within current parameters of the program, the trustees predict the program’s reserves (i.e., securities) will be depleted by 2033. Then relying solely on Social Security’s separate tax revenue, it is predicted only 77% of benefits due will be payable. That’s not being totally broke, but it would have an adverse effect on the income many elderly depend upon.

Raising the Social Security retirement age to purportedly reduce costs also has adverse effects that, as I discussed earlier, the Congressional Research Service among others have outlined. For one, among those of lesser means who also on average have lower life expectancies, increasing the retirement age would reduce their lifetime Social Security benefits collected disproportionately relative to reductions among higher income earners with typically longer life expectancies. Increasing the retirement age would, furthermore, disproportionately harm those retiring early due to work-related health impairment suffered most prevalently in blue-collar occupations.

A different option some propose to increase revenue is eliminating the cap on the income subject to the Social Security payroll tax. In 2024 the limit on income taxed will be $168,600. Income above that limit would not currently be taxed.

However Social Security is made solvent for the future, one thing is quite clear. Social Security has not been the reason for incurred and increasing U.S. debt.

Getting back a little late. At least they left the light on. 💡

Vet wrap is the best. In every first aid kit I have. (There are several.) always recommending it , along with aloe and arnica.

Sorry to hear about your eminent demise. You could use arnica and aloe.

also I got a tattoo partially re-coloured today and they bandaged me in veterinary wrap like I'm a sick horse

ABSOLUTELY

Reblog if you think public libraries are important and should be maintained.

Oh you mean publicly funded child grooming centers?

The scary thing. The really scary thing is there are millions of people who believe that that is exactly what libraries are.

But let me turn that on it’s head, and embrace it. They are child grooming centers. Because they are a place where children can be groomed not to learn what to read and what not to read, but to read. Groomed not to learn what to think and what not to think, but to think. Groomed not to learn what to believe and what not to believe, but to question. Groomed not to condone or condemn the ideas, believes, and lifestyles of other people, but to understand they exist.

Because once a child learns to read, think, question, and understand they can grow to become a dangerously intelligent and formidable adult. And if there is one thing that scares the shit out of governments and institutions it is exactly what this nation needs more of; dangerously intelligent and formidable adults.

And on a personal note, if you think libraries are places where kids go to get groomed to be molested, become drag queens, gay, communists, fornicators, or God knows what else your Jack in the Box fucked up mind can come up with, you’re kinda a dipshit. And you clearly don’t spend much, if any, time in public libraries.

Apparently, there is a certain level of baseline embarrassment that is now part and parcel of my life. 🫢 🫣

Luckily [ O M G So lucky ] there is a well loved and select group I now find I can trust with this anomaly (for me).

As luckily they don’t know a thing about this confession. Ha, ha, ha ha ha ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha oh fuck.

And so it goes…………..

Kinda cool 😎

You cannot imagine how much I wish this!!!!!

I started with computers, hacking a Commodore 64, building my own board for new chips,

When there were no mice to click. ! You had to type everything. And write your code to make it work.

When I got a power Mac and access to real processing chips, I thought I was in heaven.

Now there are so many barriers to doing any of that, and they tell me this makes it better for me !

NO, IT DOESN’T. !

When I actually buy something I get to do whatever the fuck I want with it, because I bought it. !

I take complete responsibility for doing risky things. That’s all on me.

Medium

Enshitternet

The old, good internet deserves a new, good internet

I miss the old, good internet, but I don’t want to bring it back.

I want a new, good internet. One where users can’t be locked in because we make it legal to:

• reverse-engineer products and services, so you can leave a social media platform but still send and receive messages from the people you leave behind;

• jailbreak your devices so you can remove antifeatures like surveillance, ink-locking or repair-blocking; • move your media and files out of the silo whence they originated and into any player you want.

I want a new, good internet where we constrain the conduct of tech companies, banning unfair labor practices, deceptive marketing, corporate hostage-taking and other forms of rent-extraction.

I want a new, good internet where it’s both illegal to impose bossware on your employees, and where those employees can legally hack the bossware their bosses shove down their throats.

I want a new, good internet where creative workers and their audiences can reliably connect with one another, where news reporting isn’t held hostage to extractive processes.

I want a new, good internet where we seize the means of computation so that the digital infrastructure that connects our romantic, personal, political, civic, economic, educational and family and social lives is operated by and for the people who use it.

-Enshitternet: The old, good internet deserves a new, good internet