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A third of Florida's nearly 3 million retirees, 65 and older, now rely entirely on Social Security, according to an analysis by AARP. "Folks have spent down their assets," said Jeff Johnson, AARP interim director in Florida. More Floridians are likely to end up only on Social Security than retirees in the rest of the country: A quarter of U.S. retirees, 65 and older, have only their monthly checks as income, Johnson said. Many of the most strapped are Florida's oldest, he added. Florida seniors, 80 and older, are about three times as likely to depend

I'm talking about the direct constitutional, virtue-of-the-law way that Social Security's paid for is with that one deduction on your paycheck, FICA. I don't remember what it stands for and it doesn't matter. Now, my point about this is, here you have a Democrat president, who wants to cut the payroll tax by 4%, he wants that large a tax cut in the payroll tax, which would blow a $250 billion hole in Social Security funding at a time when everybody knows that we're short on being able to pay all the obligations now. We have reached the tipping point....

Not just some offhand comment... GOP court-jester Ron Paul is now working the remark hard in Iowa as he attempts to sow doubt in the hearts of Newt-intenders... while the rest of us scratch our heads and wonder what ever possessed Gingrich to put it out there in the first place. After seeing the Ryan budget's approval rating tank in the polls for a month, Newt came out in mid-May stating he didn't find 'right-wing social engineering' any more palatable than ObamaCare's 'left-wing social engineering'. The former House Speaker then attempted to nuance that criticism of Ryan's Path to Prosperity in...

In this exclusive video, Nobel-laureate F. A. Hayek discusses the evolution of morality and social norms, arguing that they result from unplanned, emergent processes. He contrasts this conclusion with other philosophical accounts of law and morality.

Social Security advocates are planning to protest Thursday at Social Security offices around the county. Thousands of American Federation of Government Employees Social Security employees, along with the Alliance for Retired Americans, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and the Strengthen Social Security Campaign are protesting recent proposals from Congress that would cut the Social Security Administration's operational budget.

For one of the nation’s most famous billionaires, Steve Jobs kept a low profile as a charitable donor. Unlike fellow tech leaders Bill Gates of Microsoft and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, he did not sign the Giving Pledge, the effort under which the nation’s richest individuals commit to giving at least half of their wealth to philanthropy. His name is absent from the list of gifts of $1 million or more maintained by Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy. And it wasn’t until after an unflattering media report aboutJobs on the subject over the summer that Apple in September initiated a...

She's Baaaaack! No sooner does Noman think he's done with Elizabeth Warren than she leaps into the fray with yet more provocative material. This woman is a living, breathing blog-op. It's worth taking time to address her for several reasons. First, she's a walking compendium of Liberal certitudes whose cocksure righteousness causes her to effuse pristine formulations of Statist credal beliefs. Secondly, she's a Chaired Harvard Law Professor, which attests to her position at the top of the profession's food chain, and highlights the beliefs that animate the nation's preeminent reservoir of legal wisdom. Finally, she's a perpetual menace to...

Women are to be allowed to vote in Saudi Arabia. K ing Abdullah bin Abdulaziz announced the change yesterday and also said women would be allowed to run in elections. However, the new law will not come into force until 2015. In a speech, the king said the move was in accordance with sharia law.

I like Freeman's idea of providing each individual with a trust fund when young rather than retirement benefits when old, but we had better realize that this is a significant change in the character of the social insurance system. Social Security is structured from the point of view of the recipients as if it were an ordinary retirement plan: what you get out depends on what you put in. So it does not look like a redistributionist scheme. In practice it has turned out to be strongly redistributionist, but only because of its Ponzi game aspect, in which each generation...

I didn’t participate in the mass social justice rallies last night. I wanted to, sort of. But inertia and washing the post-Shabbat dishes grabbed center stage. Moreover, I’m still conflicted about whether or not I fully support what’s going on outside on our streets. Nehemia Strasler put it best in an article in today’s Haaretz. Strasler, an economics writer for the paper, compared the two main voices of the protest movement: that of Daphni Leef, who started the whole thing on Facebook, and Itzik Shmuli, head of the National Student Union. Leef tends to get most of the press –...

A college student pinned under a car that had crashed into his motorcycle in Brooklyn died yesterday after rescue workers struggling to free him from the wreckage dropped the vehicle on him in a tragic accident. Karam Rampersaud, 21, of Brooklyn, had been on his way to classes at City College when he collided with a Ford Taurus at 8:45 a.m. on Loring Avenue and Forbell Street in East New York. Seconds after cops and firefighters started to lift the Ford with a jack, things went horribly wrong. “The car was about four feet up,” said witness James Selder, 41....

BEL-RIDGE • St. Louis County Police arrested 30 people at a Bel-Ridge house last week while they were executing a search warrant to look for evidence of prostitution, alcohol violations, drugs, and weapons. The house, in the 8800 block of Snowhill Court, was raided early Friday morning by the county's tactical operations, K-9, and special investigating units. The address is listed as the location of the "Yes We Can Social Club" on the Missouri Secretary of State's website. It was incorporated in January for the purposes of "recreation" and says that assets from the corporation would be given "to another...

Here and in Europe, the financial meltdown exposes the hollowness of our elites. We are witnessing a widespread crisis of faith in our progressive guardians of the last 30 years. These are the blue-chip, university-certified elite, employed by universities, government, and big-money private foundations and financial-services companies. The best recent examples are sorts like Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Larry Summers, Peter Orszag, Robert Rubin, Steven Chu, and Timothy Geithner. Politicians like John Kerry, John Edwards, and Al Gore all share certain common characteristics of this Western technocracy: proper legal or academic credentials, ample service in elected or appointed government office,...

"We will fight Amalek on every front," says the Jewish Internet Defense Force. An Israeli politician and pro-Israel advocates succeeded in reducing Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah's social media presence, as Nasrallah's fan page - which boasted about 9,000 supporters - was removed Monday from the social networking site Facebook. The battle against the fan page was waged by former internal security minister MK Avi Dichter (Kadima) and the Jewish Internet Defense Force, which fights anti-Semitism and terrorism on the Web. Facebook has rules about pages that are hateful and promote terrorist behavior, so Dichter implored his Facebook supporters to...

Sisters suing to get Social Security numbersThe sisters, who live in Laurel County, say their parents never sought birth certificates, vaccination records, or Social Security numbers for them. Posted: 11:04 AM Aug 4, 2011 LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) - Raechel Colleen Schultz and her sister, Stephanie Marie Schultz, are looking for recognition by the government. The two women, who live in rural Lily, Ky., were born at home. They were home-schooled and their parents never sought birth certificates, vaccination records or Social Security numbers for them. Now, 29-year-old Raechel and 23-year-old Stephanie have sued the Social Security Administration in an effort...

While Congress raises the nation’s debt limit by trillions to accommodate President Obama’s manic spending spree, the commander-in-chief keeps hurling big chunks of taxpayer dollars at new government programs that aim to bring “social equity” to underserved communities. Among them is an imaginative multi-agency project (Partnership for Sustainable Communities) that helps low-income communities improve access to affordable housing, transportation options and lower transportation costs while protecting the environment. Less than a month ago the administration celebrated its second anniversary by bragging that three federal agencies have doled out more than $2.5 billion in “assistance” to promote “equitable development” while addressing...

WASHINGTON, July 28, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- On Friday, July 29th, 170 representatives of organizations that are part of the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable (JSJRT) will travel to the White House for a policy briefing to exchange ideas on housing, healthcare, food justice and education. The JSJRT is a group of 21 nonprofit organizations promoting economic and social justice as a core tenet of Jewish life. "Many people think the Jewish community has only one message to bring to Washington and it's about Israel," said Rabbi Jennie Rosenn, director of the Jewish Life and Values Program of the Nathan Cummings Foundation,...

Reid: Would consider entitlement cuts in big dealJuly 12, 2011 WASHINGTON—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he would consider cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security if they were part of a "grand bargain' that includes tax increases. Tweet Be the first to Tweet this!.ShareThis .Reid defined a "grand bargain" as a plan that reduces future deficits by $4 trillion, the number used by President Barack Obama. Republican leaders oppose tax increases, so negotiators are focusing on more modest proposals. Reid has resisted cuts to the major benefit programs, and previously said that Social Security should not be part of...

President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks. "I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News. The Obama administration and many economists have

Democratic Gov. Mark Dayton and Republican leaders restarted budget talks Tuesday for the first time since Minnesota's government shut down five days earlier, but with no progress to speak of the focus shifted from the Capitol to a courtroom where recipients of government money pleaded for their services to continue. Dayton, House Speaker Kurt Zellers and Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch met for about an hour and said they would resume talks Wednesday. The possibility of a lingering shutdown raised the stakes for dozens of groups who spent Tuesday in a courtroom before a court-appointed special master. In the second...

Man oh man. What is happening to our society? Where are all of these people coming from all of the sudden? People parking in Handicapped spots that walk completely fine and then pull down the placard as they drive away. Ignorant people that cut in line at the deli, amusement park or shows. Parents on cell phone calls as their crazed kids run around uncontrollably. I ain't perfect, nor am I one of those people that said "when I was young..." Because I feel a lot of these teens have more "manners" than most adults and younger kids. WTH is...

Catholic Archbishop Nienstedt recently asserted in a letter to state officials that the state budget is a moral document and higher state spending is a moral good. At a time when society needs the Church's teaching more than ever, unfortunately in this case the Archbishop's reasoning creates more confusion than clarity and sheds more heat than light. Many of us who share the Archbishop's faith-based heart for the poor disagree with his conclusion that more state spending is the answer. In secular terms we would call it a confusion of means versus ends. In Catholic terms it is a confusion...

New emails obtained by The Daily Caller contradict claims by the Obama administration that the Treasury Department would avoid “intervening in the day-to-day management” of General Motors post-auto bailout. These messages reveal that Treasury officials were involved in decision-making that led to more than 20,000 non-union workers losing their pensions. (General Motors not eager to be political talking point in 2012) Republican Reps. Dan Burton and Mike Turner say that during the GM bailout, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner decided to cut pensions for salaried non-union employees at Delphi, a GM spinoff, to expedite GM’s emergence from bankruptcy. At a Wednesday...

Mitt Romney’s social awkwardness is legendary – and the media is noticing it to the detriment of his 2012 hopes. Romney has caught flak before for his lack of casual ease, lack of social polish, and general banality. But now that the media has taken to writing stories about it, the ‘Romney is a weird, awkward Morman’... threatens to catch and destroy his image, as...from the Washington Post: In formal settings -- news conferences, or Monday night's debate -- Romney is confident and competent. But in casual moments, such as Tuesday morning's retail politics in New Hampshire, his weirdness comes...

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--Lawmakers may not reach an agreement to tackle the ballooning federal debt until financial markets indicate they are losing confidence in the United States' ability to pay its obligations, former heads of the Congressional Budget Office warned Tuesday. [...] Borrowing rates for the federal government remain at historically low levels, but confidence could erode quickly, Tuesday's panelists said. Douglas Holtz-Eaken, who headed the CBO during the George W. Bush administration, predicted a crisis of confidence in less than two years unless action is made to reduce long-term deficits. Concerns about market confidence could be constructive, some panelists said....

For most mothers, the love they have for their child is unconditional. And if that wasn't the case, few would dare admit it. Which perhaps explains why a woman breaking that social taboo has chosen to write under a pseudonym. In an article published today in the latest issue of REDBOOK, the mother-of-two, who calls herself Jennifer Rabiner, confesses how she has never been able to love her eldest child.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A military built for fighting wars is looking more and more like a health care entitlement program. Costs of the program that provides health coverage to some 10 million active duty personnel, retirees, reservists and their families have jumped from $19 billion in 2001 to $53 billion in the Pentagon's latest budget request. Desperate to cut spending in Washington's time of fiscal austerity, President Barack Obama has proposed increasing the fees for working-age retirees in the decades-old health program, known as TRICARE. After years of resisting proposed increases for the military men and women who sacrificed for...

Social Security Payments to Go Paperless Beginning May 1Published April 22, 2011 | FoxNews.com Social Security checks are going paperless beginning May 1, as the U.S. Treasury Department retires paper checks for electronic payments. The cost-saving measure, which won't be fully implemented until May 2013, is aimed at reducing government expenses by $1 billion over the next decade as millions of baby boomers and others apply for monthly federal benefits. Federal benefits will also be paid electronically to recipients of veterans and disability payments, the Treasury Department announced Friday. Eighteen million baby boomers are expected to go onto the retirement...

In this video, one that I have never seen, Orly Taitz reems a reporter at The National Press Club. In it she reveals that BHO's dead mother's SSN is still being used to this day with addresses from NY and HI tied to it. Taitz also state that there is no record of his mother being in any hospital in HI.

...Senator Santorum was the last to speak to the convention before the straw poll was taken. ... "We have people talking in our party that we need to go away from the moral issues. America, ladies and gentlemen, is a moral enterprise at its core." He is absolutely correct. ... One of the Press reports on this important Straw Poll win - which surprised many political pundits - referred to the Senators comment on America as "focusing more on philosophy than policy." It is that kind of shallow review of the coming Presidential election campaign which motivates me all the...

On April 5, President Obama kicked off his newly-minted presidential campaign by announcing that he would be conducting a “Facebook town hall” event streaming live via the website and via the White House website on April 20. Just to ensure that the Facebook audience recognizes that this isn’t merely another media appearance but an endorsement of Obama by the Facebook executives, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg quizzed Obama before an audience of over 1,000 Facebook employees and other internet mavens. The recorded result will be chopped up and distributed via Facebook and the White House...

For as long as there has been human socialization, discussion, debate, confrontation or even dialogue, there has been the age old tactic of ‘changing the subject.’ We’ve all experienced it. We’ve all indulged in it. Those of us who are a little smarter than the average folk out there are especially victimized by a particular genre of this tactic. The discussion is underway, and each party is offering their thoughts. The tables then turn in your favor, and you see the victory in sight. Your counterpart then comes out with…“Why are you so angry?’

In Al Gore revival, Senate Dems eye the lockbox for Social SecurityBy Alexander Bolton - 02/24/11 08:20 PM ET Senate Democrats want to put the Social Security trust fund in a lockbox and insulate it from a broader budget-cutting package designed to reduce the national deficit. It’s a revival of the concept that former Vice President Al Gore (D) made famous when he sparred with George W. Bush over a proposal to invest a portion of Social Security funds in the private market. Eleven years late, Social Security is again a hot political topic. President Obama during his State of...

Nick Clegg is to make an explosive attack on British universities as ‘instruments of social segregation’ as he orders them to stop taking so many middle-class students. The Deputy Prime Minister will this week insist that top institutions must ‘throw open their doors’ and lower their entrance requirements for the less well-off.

Washington Democrats and the Obama campaign may have pioneered the use of social media in an election, but Republican voters and tea party activists caught up with them in 2010, according to a new report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

REID: One of the thing that always troubles me, when we start talking about the debt, the first thing people do is run to social security. Social Security is a program that works and it’s going to be, it’s fully funded for the next 40 years, stop picking on social security. there are a lot of places… GREGORY: “Senator, you’re really saying the arithmetic on social security works?” REID: “I’m saying that the arithmetic on Social Security works. I have no doubt it does. GERGORY: “It’s not in crisis? REID: “No, this is something that’s perpetuated by people who don’t...

Today’s CBO report has some bad news about the deficit. But CBO has some really, really bad news about Social Security: It’s officially broke. The CBO’s revenue/expenditure estimates now place the program in permanent deficit. There had been some hope that payroll taxes would recover sufficiently post-recession to put the program back into the black (the theoretical black) for at least a few more years, putting off the day of reckoning for an election cycle or more. No more: The new CBO estimates put Social Security in the red for as far as the eye can see. But there’s a...

1. Charity in truth, to which Jesus Christ bore witness by his earthly life and especially by his death and resurrection, is the principal driving force behind the authentic development of every person and of all humanity. Love — caritas — is an extraordinary force which leads people to opt for courageous and generous engagement in the field of justice and peace... 2. Charity is at the heart of the Church's social doctrine. Every responsibility and every commitment spelt out by that doctrine is derived from charity which, according to the teaching of Jesus, is the synthesis of the entire...

Peter Cardinal Turkson, President of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, has a message for Catholics in America, particularly those involved in social justice ministry, that could put a damper on the political machinations of the Shadow Party. The message? “Social justice” is about “relationships,” not “socialism.” This clarification may very well be the catalyst to set the Catholic Church in America back on course with authentic Catholic teaching on hot-button issues involving massive government entitlement programs and other forms of overreach. If nothing else, it will almost certainly jump-start the “social justice” debate among Catholics. Cardinal Turkson,...

A Polish research institute has developed a board game to teach young people about life under Communism. In the game, which is inspired by Monopoly, players must wait in endless lines at stores for scarce goods. For added realism, they have to put up with people cutting in line and products running out -- unless they have a "colleague in the government" card. --snip-- The goal of the game, which will officially be launched on Feb. 5, is to show how hard and frustrating it was for an average person to simply do their shopping under the Communist regime in...

the government actually claims it can hold hostage people's Social Security payments in order to FORCE those people to accept Medicare enrollment. The Department of Health and Human Services insists an individual cannot forfeit Medicare eligibility and continue to collect Social Security benefits even after paying into the latter system over an entire career.

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America is signaling its intention to dominate the national sex education agenda. Specifically, Planned Parenthood's Web site announced the group is preparing to launch a nationwide “social change initiative” to end the “stigma and shame about sex” in American culture. The project aims to teach parents and caregivers how to educate children about sex -- from birth. And it recommends telling teenagers about masturbation, oral sex and “where to go for help to prepare to be sexually active.”

There's no need to worry, Social Security is OKBy Charles O. Kroncke and William Holahan Ventura County Star Posted January 1, 2011 at 1:59 p.m. Social Security is an expensive program. But it is not about to explode, not now nor when the bonds in the Trust Fund run out. Nor is it broke, a Ponzi scheme or any of the other pejoratives often used to describe it. Costs are not rising at a frightening pace that will lead to its demise in a few decades. It should not be lumped in with Medicare, where costs are rising out of...

Pensions: Nearly 30 years ago, on the very day Ronald Reagan was sworn in as U.S. president, Chile became the first nation to privatize its social security system. Three decades hence, it has surpassed all expectations. Decades ago, Chile's then-military dictatorship shuddered at a proposal from then-Labor Minister Jose Pinera to privatize Chile's liability-laden pension system. The military men argued that the public was too ignorant to manage its own affairs and only government's firm hand could be trusted to provide. Pinera explained that the pension liabilities the government then couldn't pay were not only perfectly payable, but could be...

'Obama attacking Social Security'Fri Dec 17, 2010 6:55PM US President Barack Obama's controversial tax cut deal with the Republicans "is an attack on Social Security," an online columnist says. “This is a total sell-out by Barack Obama… That's a huge problem. It will lower the pay-roll tax. The tax [that is needed] to fund Social Security. It is an attack on Social Security …,” online columnist Allen Roland told Press TV on Friday. Roland continued, “It will cut one third of Social Security funding this year alone. That's the only safety net that we have. Can you believe that the...

Social Security advocates fear payroll tax cutBy Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press Sun Dec 12, 8:18 am ET WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama's plan to cut payroll taxes for a year would provide big savings for many workers, but makes Social Security advocates nervous that it could jeopardize the retirement program's finances. The plan is part of a package of tax cuts and extended unemployment benefits that Obama negotiated with Senate Republican leaders. It would cut workers' share of Social Security taxes by nearly one-third for 2011. Workers making $50,000 in wages would get a $1,000 tax cut; those making $100,000...

Retirees will no longer be able to get an interest-free loan from the Social Security trust fund, the Social Security Administration announced today. Effective on December 8, retirees will not be able to pay back benefits already received in exchange for higher Social Security payments going forward. Here's a look at how the new Social Security rules could impact your checks.

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The coming federal budget debacle is one shrouded by lies wrapped in euphemisms, obfuscated by spin. Just as an example of the less than truthful statements coming from the Federal Government in it’s denial of the impending disaster to befall the nation I need only to point to the excerpt from the Trustee’s Report on Social Security. The outlook for Medicare has improved substantially because of program changes made in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as amended by the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (the “Affordable Care Act” or ACA). Despite lower near-term revenues resulting...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Judges who hear Social Security disability cases are facing a growing number of violent threats from claimants angry over being denied benefits or frustrated at lengthy delays in processing claims. There were at least 80 threats to kill or harm administrative law judges or staff over the past year - an 18 percent increase over the previous reporting period, according to data collected by the agency. The data was released to the Association of Administrative Law Judges and made available to The Associated Press. One claimant in Albuquerque, N.M., called his congressman's office to say he was...