The end of Empire, Social Security, raising taxes, Second Amendment abuses, Japan to the rescue, U.S losing power of intimidation

Social Security payments have been plundered since he Johnson Administration to pay for the General Budget. Now Congress wants to erase the debt owed by the US, Government. Not reducing entitlements but robbing the public who pai into their retirement accounts.

by Irwin Kellner
Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Any use of Social Security tax revenues other than paying benefits to those people who are eligible to receive them is not only morally wrong — it is also against the law.
Lately, most discussions about ways of reducing Washington's budget deficit have inevitably turned to cutting entitlements. So much so that the New York Times in a recent editorial was upset that many elected officials have pledged to "shield seniors from spending cuts, apparently to please recipients of entitlements like ... Social Security."
Breaking this particular promise would break the law — which, I would hope, the New York Times respects. The law that I am referring to is the FICA Act of 1935, which specifically stated that revenues raised under that act can be used only to pay Social Security benefits.
To add insult to injury the pols — aided and abetted by some in the media — now want to grab even more money from seniors in order to reduce Washington's humongous budget deficit.

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The way to pay the bills. Finally somebody in the provinces figures it out. When will Washington?

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – A major Illinois tax increase has jumped its first legislative hurdle, setting the stage for a vote by the entire Illinois House.
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When are we going to come to our senses and cut all the Second Amendment abuse?

The Daily Beast The Daily Beast – Tue Jan 11, 1:13 am ET
NEW YORK – You're five times more likely to die from a gun in Arizona than Hawaii.
Advocates for gun laws argue that restrictions prevent suicides, gun trafficking and domestic violence. A study commissioned by Mayors Against Illegal Guns last year concluded that the states with the most lenient gun laws are responsible for the guns used in crimes across state lines at much higher rate than states with strict laws, concluding that "certain gun laws are an important component in reducing criminal access to firearms."

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You can always count on the Feds in a ponch

By ANDREW WELSH-HUGGINS
The Associated Press 
2011-01-11
The Food and Drug Administration, which has long maintained that it has nothing to do with drugs used in executions, has quietly helped Arizona and California obtain a scarce type of anesthetic so the states could continue putting inmates to death.
The shortage of sodium thiopental has disrupted executions around the country. But newly released documents show the FDA helped import it from Britain

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All the news in the U.S. about Japan’s economy is negative. Wonder how Japan can bail out Europe and maintain its own social services?

On Tuesday January 11, 2011, 7:17 am EST
By Jeremy Gaunt, European Investment Correspondent
LONDON (Reuters) - World stocks firmed on Tuesday on hopes for a solid earnings season, while the euro steadied above four-month lows after Japan offered to buy euro zone bonds.
Japan said it was considering buying about 20 percent of the bonds to be jointly issued later this month to raise funds to support Ireland, but investors remained cautious ahead of a make-or-break debt auction in struggling Portugal on Wednesday

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U.S losing its intimidation factor in world affairs

China Flexes Its Muscles with Stealth Fighter Flight Test
By AUSTIN RAMZY, Time
For a stealth fighter it was a remarkably obvious flight, but perhaps that was the point. On a day when U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates was in Beijing meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao, China's new stealth fighter took what is believed to be its maiden test flight, according to a defense analyst.
Gates maintains that the U.S. will keep its edge in stealth aircraft development for some time. "In 2020 or 2025 ... there would still be a vast disparity in the number of deployed fifth-generation aircraft that the United States had compared to anybody else in the world."
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U.S may have to forget hopes for regime change in North Korea. What’s this world coming to when North Korea can defend its government from being hijacked ala Iraq, Afghanistan?

BEIJING (Reuters) – North Korea is becoming a direct threat to the United States and could develop an inter-continental ballistic missile within five years, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said on Tuesday.
"I think that North Korea will have developed an inter-continental ballistic missile within that time -- not that they will have huge numbers or anything like that," Gates said. "But they will have, I believe they will have a very limited capability."
North Korea has more than 800 ballistic missiles and more than 1,000 missiles of various ranges.
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Collapse of Empire not a bad thing. The Brits survived without being crushed by a war. So have the Russians. Now the American Empire dying by our own hand from the Reagan treatment? Break the bank

Nick Turse, TomDispatch: "Like all empires, the US military's empire of bases will someday crumble. These bases, however, are not apt to fall like so many dominos in some silver-screen last-stand sequence. They won't, that is, go out with the 'bang' of futuristic Alamos, but with the 'whimper' of insolvency. Last year, rumbling began even among Washington lawmakers about this increasingly likely prospect. 'I do not think we should be spending money to have troops in Germany 65 years after World War II. We have a terrible deficit and we have to cut back,' said Massachusetts Democratic Congressman Barney Frank."
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Figuring out who’s nutty

Fox News: The No. 1 Name in Murder Fantasies
Steve Rendall, FAIR: "Bill O'Reilly's recent 'joke' about decapitating Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank was only the latest example of a demented Fox News culture that permits on-air personalities to fantasize about assassination and other forms of violence against those deemed enemies of the station, its personalities or their worldview. During the cable channel's 2008 election coverage, in what she later called an attempt at humor, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta linked Osama bin Laden to Barack Obama as people who both should be assassinated: 'And now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama, uh Obama. Well, both, if we could.'"