Let’s Reflect On The History Of Social Security: On The Government Takeover And Of The FAR Better Privatized Option We Should Have Had

I begin by quoting from Burton Folsom, Jr.’s New Deal Or Raw Deal? to illustrate the history of the disaster that is otherwise known as “Social Security”:

Roosevelt’s social security plan created an array of problems. First, it retarded recovery from the Great Depression by contributing to unemployment. From 1937 to 1940, employers and employees were docked for social security, and that money was out of private hands and lying fallow in the treasury. Lloyd Peck of the Laundryowners National Association concluded, “The burden of this proposal for employers to carry, through a payroll tax, will act as a definite curb on business expansion, and will likely eliminate many businesses now on the verge of bankruptcy.”

Second, social security was unsound financially.  Unlike life insurance policies, workers had to live to age sixty-two to collect anything.  Life expectancy in 1930, the year of the most recent census, was almost sixty years, which meant that most people of that time would lose money from their paycheck every month for thirty to forty years, and neither they nor their children would ever receive a return on it.  In the case of black Americans, who had only a forty-eight-year life expectancy in 1930, most contributed to pensions that would disproportionately go to whites.  What’s more, the payroll tax was regressive – Henry Ford and Andrew Mellon paid in the same amount as their employees who earned $3,000 a year.

While some Americans were soaked by social security, others, especially the first retirees, rolled in benefits after making only minimal payments.  Ida Fuller, for example, a legal secretary in Ludlow, Vermont, paid a total of $24.75 into social security from 1937 to 1940, when she retired at age sixty-five.  Her first monthly social security check of $22.54 almost matched her entire contribution.  At her death in 1975, she had received $22,888.92 from social security, a payout of roughly $1,000 for every dollar she paid in.

When an accountant quizzed Roosevelt about the economic problems with social security, especially its tendency to create unemployment, he responded, “I guess you’re right on the economics, but those taxes were never a problem of economics.  They are politics all the way through.”  Roosevelt explained that “with those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.”  That’s why, as Roosevelt admitted, it’s “politics all the way through.”  Most politicians, following Roosevelt’s lead, have taken delight in raising social security payouts and using that gift to plead for votes from the elderly at election time.

In the original debate in the Senate on social security, Senator Bennett Champ Clark of Missouri wondered if private pensions for retirement might outperform the government pensions proposed in the social security bill.  He introduced the Clark Amendment, which would have allowed private employers to opt out of social security.

The key provision in the Clark Amendment was that employers had to at least match the government’s social security program in benefits to the employee and in premiums extracted from the employee.  The employer also had to agree to place the premiums with an insurance company – to an approved alternative – and to give all employees the right to choose the government-run program instead of the private alternative.

When the Clark Amendment was debated before the Senate in 1935, the advocates of a government monopoly were on the defensive.  On of them, Senator Robert La Follette, Jr., of Wisconsin complained: “If e shall adopt this amendment, the government having determined to set up a federal system of old-age [insurance], will provide in its own bill creating that system, for competition, which in the end may destroy the federal system.”  La Follette was perceptive.  If private insurance or mutual funds were allowed to compete with the government, no one might choose the government plan.  The Senate decided that workers ought to have a choice and voted 51-35 to make the Clark Amendment part of the social security law.

President Roosevelt was furious at the Senate, and threatened to veto the social security bill if it came to him with the Clark Amendment attached.  When the House passed a social security bill without the Clark Amendment, Roosevelt and his supporters used a parliamentary tactic to gain victory.  The House-Senate conference committee met to work out a compromise bill, and naturally the Clark Amendment was the main point of debate.  The committee decided to submit a final bill to Roosevelt with the government monopoly intact.  But they agreed to appoint a special joint legislative committee to study the Clark Amendment and report to Congress the next year on how best to provide for competition.  but after the government monopoly was instituted, the promised meeting in 1936 was never held.  Given that many private pension plans over the last sixty years have returned around 8 percent a year, and that social security benefits have averaged less than a 2 percent return, Senator Clark’s alternative showed much wisdom, but he couldn’t overcome Roosevelt’s political skill. — Burton Folsom, Jr., New Deal Or Raw Deal?  How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America, 2008, pp. 116-118

Can we document the fact that FDR massively undermined workers and created devastating unemployment with his stupid and immoral policies?  To quote Obama, “Yes we can!”  For one thing, economists can now calculate that FDR prolonged the Great Depression and all the misery that accompanied it by seven years.

Don’t believe those economists?  Okay, then allow me to quote Henry Morganthau, FDR’s close personal friend and Secretary of the Treasury:

“We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. And I have just one interest, and if I am wrong… somebody else can have my job. I want to see this country prosperous. I want to see people get a job. I want to see people get enough to eat. We have never made good on our promises… I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started… And an enormous debt to boot!” – Henry Morganthau, FDR’s Treasury Secretary, May 1939

In April 1939, for the record, unemployment was 20.7%

Don’t believe the economists or FDR’s own treasury secretary?  The how about Barack Obama’s former chief economic advisor?

Larry Summers blasphemy: Hitler saved FDR’s ass
by Lee on July 23, 2011 21:16 pm

Larry Summers is often quotable and Charlie Rose is occasionally watchable. Put ‘em together and you get the very definition of a blind sow finding an acorn.
 
The whole clip is interesting, but the money quote begins a hair after the 21:30 mark when Summers says something about left wing icon FDR that will undoubtedly result in fewer dinner invitations in the Hamptons this summer:

“Never forget, never forget, and I think it’s very important for Democrats especially to remember this, that if Hitler had not come along, Franklin Roosevelt would have left office in 1941 with an unemployment rate in excess of 15 percent and an economic recovery strategy that had basically failed.”
 
Why next thing you know Summers will be saying that Keynesian economics don’t work.

Clip here to watch the video: CharlieRose.com
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11777

You might also be interested in finding out what Obama’s former chief economic advisor had to say about the massive and massively failed $862 billion (and actually, according to the CBO, $3.27 TRILLION) stimulus.

It is a documented fact that FDR and the Democrat Party failed America.

Now consider one country that tried what that Democrat Senator (Bennett Champ Clark) proposed achieved:

Chile’s Privatized Social Security Program is 30 Years Old, and Prospering
Written by Bob Adelmann   
Tuesday, 03 May 2011 16:40

As a quiet example of how privatizing Social Security works in the real world, Chile’s 30-year experiment is succeeding beyond expectations. Instead of running huge deficits to fund the old “PayGo” system, private savings now exceed 50 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product.

Prior to May 1, 1981, the Chilean system required contributions from workers and was clearly in grave financial trouble. Instead of nibbling around the edges to shore up the program for another few years, José Piñera, Secretary of Labor and Pensions under Augusto Pinochet, decided to do a major overhaul of the system:

We knew that cosmetic changes — increasing the retirement age, increasing taxes — would not be enough. We understood that the pay-as-you-go system had a fundamental flaw, one rooted in a false conception of how human beings behave. That flaw was lack of a link between what people put into their pension program and what they take out….

So we decided to go in the other direction, to link benefits to contributions. The money that a worker pays into the system goes into an account that is owned by the worker.

The system still required contributions of 10 percent of salary, but the money was deposited in any one of an array of private investment companies. Upon retirement, the worker had a number of options, including purchasing an annuity for life. Along the way he could track the performance of his account, and increase his contribution (up to 20 percent) if he wanted to retire earlier, or increase his payout at retirement.

How well has the system performed? John Tierney, a writer for the New York Times, went to visit Pablo Serra, a former classmate and friend in Santiago a few years ago, and they compared notes on how well their respective retirement programs were doing. Tierney brought along his latest statement from Social Security, while his friend brought up his retirement plan on his computer. It turned out that they both had been contributing about the same amount of money, so the comparison was apt, and startling, said Tierney:

Pablo could retire in 10 years, at age 62, with an annual pension of $55,000. That would be more than triple the $18,000 I can expect from Social Security at that age. OR

Pablo could retire at age 65 with an annual pension of $70,000. That would almost triple the $25,000 pension promised [to me] by Social Security starting a year later, at age 66. OR

Pablo could retire at age 65 with an annual pension of $53,000 and [in addition receive] a one-time cash payment of $223,000.

Tierney wrote that Pablo said “I’m very happy with my account.” Tierney suggested that, upon retirement, Pablo could not only retire nicely, but be able to buy himself a vacation home at the shore or in the country. Pablo laughed it off, and Tierney wrote: “I’m trying to look on the bright side. Maybe my Social Security check will cover the airfare to visit him.”

According to Investors Business Daily, the average annual rate of return for Chilean workers over the last 30 years has exceeded 9% annually, after inflation, whereas “U. S. Social Security pays a 1% to 2% (theoretical) rate of return, and even less for new workers.”

As expected, the capital accumulated in these privatized accounts have generated substantial growth in Chile’s economy. As noted by Wikipedia, “Chile is one of South America’s most stable and prosperous nations, leading Latin American nations in human development, competitiveness, income per capita, globalization, economic freedom, and low perception of corruption.” [Emphases added.]

High domestic savings and investment rates helped propel Chile’s economy to average growth rates of 8% during the 1990s. The privatized national pension plan (AFP) has encouraged domestic investment and contributed to an estimated total domestic savings rate of approximately 21% of GDP.

This was anticipated by Piñera when the plan was originally designed and implemented in 1981. In reviewing the success of the plan after just 15 years, Piñera said, “The Chilean worker is an owner, a capitalist. There is no more powerful way to stabilize a free-market economy and to get the support of the workers than to link them directly to the benefits of the market system. When Chile grows at 7 percent or when the stock market doubles … Chilean workers benefit directly, not only through high wages, not only through more employment, but through additional capital in their individual pension accounts.”

All of which should resonate with American workers who have been forced to contribute to a failing Social Security system for years. And yet when given the opportunity to support any sort of privatization, as during the Clinton and Bush administrations, the idea gained little traction. And now that Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Road Map” offers the chance for those same workers to contribute just one-third of their Social Security taxes to similar private accounts, the idea continues to fall on deaf ears.

However, according to Rasmussen Reports, that may be changing. Nearly half of those polled now correctly understand ‘that making major long-term cuts in government spending will require big changes” in Social Security, Medicare, and defense. That figure, adds Rasmussen, “suggests a growing awareness of budgetary realities among the American people.”

To privatize Social Security makes nothing but sense, as in dollars and cents. The ownership of private property has always propelled economic prosperity, higher wages and improved standards of living. Only those whose goals are to impoverish the American worker and reduce his ability to manage his own affairs and control his own future would resist such an attractive alternative. As noted by Piñera,

This is a brief story of a dream that has come true. The ultimate lesson is that the only revolutions that are successful are those that trust the individual, and the wonders that individuals can do when they are free.

I think of the misery that FDR inflicted upon every single American worker for the sake of a Democrat-controlled boondoggle that would “progressively” rob one generation of Americans after another compared to what they could have had if a privatized system (such as Chile’s or such as Clark’s) had been implemented instead.

But it is not enough to say America could have had much more than what Franklin Delano Roosevelt afflicted us with as a result of his partisan political takeover to give government a sole monopoly of something it never should have involved itself with in the first place.  The simple fact of the matter is that ENTIRELY because of FDR and the increasingly despicable Democrat Party that would follow, America is now in a situation in which it is guaranteed to economically implode.

Social Security was ALWAYS a Ponzi scheme and it was ALWAYS guaranteed to ultimately fail and result in the collapse of the American dream and the very nation itself.

Consider what Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff, writing in the September issue of Finance and Development, a journal of the International Monetary Fund, discovered:

A National Debt Of $14 Trillion? Try $211 Trillion
by NPR Staff
August 6, 2011

When Standard & Poor’s reduced the nation’s credit rating from AAA to AA-plus, the United States suffered the first downgrade to its credit rating ever. S&P took this action despite the plan Congress passed this past week to raise the debt limit.

The downgrade, S&P said, “reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s medium-term debt dynamics.”

It’s those medium- and long-term debt problems that also worry economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, who served as a senior economist on President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers. He says the national debt, which the U.S. Treasury has accounted at about $14 trillion, is just the tip of the iceberg.

“We have all these unofficial debts that are massive compared to the official debt,” Kotlikoff tells David Greene, guest host of weekends on All Things Considered. “We’re focused just on the official debt, so we’re trying to balance the wrong books.”

Kotlikoff explains that America’s “unofficial” payment obligations — like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits — jack up the debt figure substantially.

“If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That’s the fiscal gap,” he says. “That’s our true indebtedness.”

We don’t hear more about this enormous number, Kotlikoff says, because politicians have chosen their language carefully to keep most of the problem off the books.

“Why are these guys thinking about balancing the budget?” he says. “They should try and think about our long-term fiscal problems.”

According to Kotlikoff, one of the biggest fiscal problems Congress should focus on is America’s obligation to make Social Security payments to future generations of the elderly.

“We’ve got 78 million baby boomers who are poised to collect, in about 15 to 20 years, about $40,000 per person. Multiply 78 million by $40,000 — you’re talking about more than $3 trillion a year just to give to a portion of the population,” he says. “That’s an enormous bill that’s overhanging our heads, and Congress isn’t focused on it.”

“We’ve consistently done too little too late, looked too short-term, said the future would take care of itself, we’ll deal with that tomorrow,” he says. “Well, guess what? You can’t keep putting off these problems.”

To eliminate the fiscal gap, Kotlikoff says, the U.S. would have to have tax increases and spending reductions far beyond what’s being negotiated right now in Washington.

“What you have to do is either immediately and permanently raise taxes by about two-thirds, or immediately and permanently cut every dollar of spending by 40 percent forever. The [Congressional Budget Office’s] numbers say we have an absolutely enormous problem facing us.”

Democrats want to self-righteously lecture us about the giant spending of Reagan or Bush.  But don’t just consider that Barack Obama demonized George Bush for increasing the debt by $4 trillion in eight years before he increased the debt by $6 trillion in only three years.  Go beyond that and divide Bush’s debt by the $211 trillion that Democrats have saddled us with after giving us toxic boondoggles loaded with lies and pork.  I come up with 1.9 percent; what do you get?

Virtually every single penny of toxic, staggering, insurmountable, unpayable debt that we have been saddled on us by Democrats.  And they have done so while giving us massively inferior boondoggles such as Social Security and Medicare.

Ponzi-Scheme Alert: Only 1.75 Full-Time Private Sector Workers Per Social Security Recipient

Rick Perry called Social Security a “ponzi scheme.”  For which he was lambasted by the mainstream media.

I mean, how DARE he call Social Security what it clearly is?

Well, here’s the bad news for you, you anti-Perry sub-rock-dwellers:

Labor Dept. Data: Only 1.75 Full-Time Private Sector Workers Per Social Security Recipient
By Terence P. Jeffrey
September 12, 2011

(CNSNews.com) – There were only 1.75 full-time private-sector workers in the United States last year for each person receiving benefits from Social Security, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Social Security board of trustees.

That means that for each husband and wife who worked full-time in the private sector last year there was a Social Security recipient somewhere in the country taking benefits from the federal government.

Most state and local workers are part of the Social Security system and pay Social Security taxes; and, since 1984, all federal workers have been part of the system and pay Social Security taxes. However, unlike private sector workers who pay Social Security taxes with private-sector dollars, government workers pay their payroll taxes out of wages government pays them with tax dollars or with money that was borrowed by government and taxpayers must eventually repay.

In its latest annual report, the Social Security board of trustees reported that the federal government’s total revenue from Social Security taxes in 2010—$544.8 billion—was not enough to cover Social Security’s total benefit payments—$577.4 billion.

The board of trustees also reported that there were 156.725 million “covered workers” in the United States who paid some Social Security taxes during 2010. But these 156.725 million “covered workers” included all workers—including government workers—who were “paid at some time during the year for employment” on which Social Security taxes were due. People who worked full-time for 52 weeks during the year were included with people who worked only part-time for a month.

The Social Security board of trustees reported that there were 53.398 million Social Security beneficiaries in 2010.

That meant, as the Social Security board of trustees reported, that there were just 2.9 “covered workers” who paid some Social Security taxes in 2010 for each individual who received Social Security benefits.

(According to the Social Security board of trustees, there were 41.9 “covered workers” per Social Security beneficiary in 1945.)

However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has generated data indicating how many full-time workers there were in the country in 2010 and how many of these worked in government as opposed to the private sector.

According to BLS, there were 111.714 million full-time workers in the United States last year. Of these, 18.073 million worked for local, state or federal government, and 93.641 million worked in the private sector.

The 93.641 million full-time private sector workers last year worked out to 1.75 for each person receiving Social Security benefits.

These 93.641 million full-time private sector workers were the foundation of the tax base that supported both government at large and Social Security in particular.

Prior to 1983, states and localities could legally opt their employees out of the Social Security system. In 1981, for example, the employees of Galveston County, Texas, voted 78 percent to 22 percent to opt out of the Social Security system for a locally run retirement plan. Brazoria and Matagorda counties in Texas also opted out of Social Security.

You damned liberals are dead dumbass fools walking, aren’t you?

In 1960 there were 5.1 workers paying into the system for every 1 retiree.  But liberals like to murder little babies, and 54 million aborted workers later things are really starting to suck.

Proverbs 8:36 describes all those who hate God “loving death.”  And that fits Democrats to a “T”.

D. James Kennedy rightly warned us about the socialist takeover of health care (aka ObamaCare):

“Watch out, Grandma and Grandpa!  Because the generation that survived abortion will one day come after YOU.”

Now Medicare will go bankrupt by 2017.  And Democrats are going to MAKE ABSOLUTELY SURE it goes bankrupt by refusing to allow the system to get the changes it needs to even possibly remain solvent.

And of course grandma and grandpa are going to find themselves standing in front of death panels to justify their existences.

Actually 160 separate and distinct death panels, mind you:

One particular progressive liberal put it best:

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, NOBEL PRIZE WINNER: I don’t want to punish anybody. (INAUDIBLE) an extraordinary number of people whom I want to kill. I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly-appointed board, just as they might come before the income tax commissioner, and say every five years, or every seven years, just put them there, and say, “Sir, or madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence?”

But I didn’t have to go back that far in time to prove my point.  I merely wanted to document that liberal progressives HAVE ALWAYS “loved death.”  I can also cite recent stuff from liberal progressives, such as this beauty by liberal progressive Robert Reich:

“Thank you. And by the way, we’re going to have to, if you’re very old, we’re not going to give you all that technology and all those drugs for the last couple of years of your life to keep you maybe going for another couple of months. It’s too expensive…so we’re going to let you die.”

Having commented on that statement before, I went on to also document the following:

Robert “Third” Reich isn’t the only one pointing out this actually quite obvious central tenet of the Democrats’ health plan. Obama has appointed at least two other “experts” to advise him on medical issues. Here’s White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s brother, Ezekiel Emanuel, whom Obama appointed as OMB health policy adviser in addition to being picked to serve on the Federal Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research:

“When implemented, the Complete Lives system produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most substantial chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated… The Complete Lives system justifies preference to younger people because of priority to the worst-off rather than instrumental value.”

“Attenuated” means, “to make thin; to weaken or reduce in force, intensity, effect, quantity, or value.” Attenuated care would be reduced or lessened care. Dare I say it, in this context it clearly means, “rationed care.”

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel included a chart with his work (available here), which shows how he wants to allocate medical resources under a government plan:

When you’re very young, or when you start reaching your 50s and 60s, you start receiving less and less priority.

Then there’s Cass Sunstein, Barack Obama’s Regulatory Czar, who wrote in the Columbia Law Review in January 2004:

“I urge that the government should indeed focus on life-years rather than lives. A program that saves young people produces more welfare than one that saves old people.”

Barack Obama’s Regulatory Czar explains:

“If a program would prevent fifty deaths of people who are twenty, should it be treated the same way as a program that would prevent fifty deaths of people who are seventy? Other things being equal, a program that protects young people seems far better than one that protects old people, because it delivers greater benefits.”

There’s a great deal more about Obama’s own advisers’ plans here.

Which very much jives with what Obama himself told a woman concerning her mother:

“At least we can let doctors know — and your mom know — that you know what, maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off, uhh, not having the surgery, but, uhh, taking the painkiller.”

We can sum it up quite nicely with the words of Obama’s former senior economic adviser: “So we’re going to let you die.”

Die with dignity. Or die without it. It doesn’t matter. What matters in the brave new world of ObamaCare is that liberals have finally succeeded in turning health care into a socialist boondoggle. And it will one day be your duty to die in order to sustain that boondoggle.

So when I call Democrats “fascists,” it’s not like I’m exaggerating or anything; it’s simply what those dangerous and toxic rat bastards are.

And old people are supposed to be afraid of Rick Perry because the man had the indecency to say the truth maybe – MAYBE – in time to do something to prevent a soon-coming holocaust of senior citizens???

Take a look at the following peer-reviewed International Monetary Fund publication claim and tell me that Rick Perry is the enemy:

Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff says U.S. government debt is not $13.5-trillion (U.S.), which is 60 per cent of current gross domestic product, as global investors and American taxpayers think, but rather 14-fold higher: $200-trillion – 840 per cent of current GDP. “Let’s get real,” Prof. Kotlikoff says. “The U.S. is bankrupt.”

Writing in the September issue of Finance and Development, a journal of the International Monetary Fund, Prof. Kotlikoff says the IMF itself has quietly confirmed that the U.S. is in terrible fiscal trouble – far worse than the Washington-based lender of last resort has previously acknowledged. “The U.S. fiscal gap is huge,” the IMF asserted in a June report. “Closing the fiscal gap requires a permanent annual fiscal adjustment equal to about 14 per cent of U.S. GDP.”

$200 TRILLION?  That’s our unfunded liabilities, thanks to evil liberal progressvies who have been slowly killing us for the last seventy years setting up the day when the American people would die by the tens of millions.  Do you got that in your pocket?  Because I sure don’t.

I got bad news for you, grandma and grandpa.  But you’re going to die.  And you’re going to die because the same party that set up your death (the Democrats) are actively working to ensure that your future medical care gets its life support plug pulled so you can “die with dignity.”  Which is another way of saying so Democrats who set up programs that were GUARANTEED to collapse can now wash their hands of you and walk away while you slowly and painfully die.

I support Rick Perry for president.  The man who is honest enough to point out the problem is the only man who can even possibly have the courage and will to fix that problem.  Because my mom and dad are on both Social Security AND Medicare.  And I don’t want any God DAMNED (and by that I mean, “damned by God to HELL”) Democrats killing them off while I’ve got a breath of life left in my body.

Obama Degenerates From Inexperienced To Flat-Out Childish

Barack Obama’s inexperience has been an issue since he began running for President.  But maybe voters should be looking into the issue of his childishness instead.

Obama has been running ads like this one:

“The dishonest smears that he repeats even after it has been exposed as a lie, truth be damned–a disgraceful, dishonorable campaign.

After voting with Bush 90 percent of the time, proposing the same disastrous economic policies. It seems that deception is all he has left.”

Now, that charge might be meaningful – and not merely the sniveling nonsense of a spoiled-rotten little brat – but he is simultaneously running ads like this one.

“John McCain has even said Social Security is a disgrace. I couldn’t disagree more. Our Social Security isn’t a disgrace. It’s a compact, a trust between generations of Americans. It’s a reflection of our values.”

Did John McCain really call Social Security a disgrace?  Not even close.  And its a horrible lie from horrible people to claim that he did.  Let me continue.

I found this from Media Matters, of all places:

ABC’s World News, NBC’s Nightly News, and the CBS Evening News have yet to cover the following statement Sen. John McCain made about Social Security during a July 7 town hall meeting in Denver: “Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that’s a disgrace. It’s an absolute disgrace, and it’s got to be fixed.” According to a Washington Post article by reporters Jonathan Weisman and Michael D. Shear, McCain “sought to clarify his remarks” by saying young people are, in McCain’s words, “paying so much that they are paying into a system that they won’t receive benefits from on its present track that its on, that’s the point.”

Now, having read what McCain said was disgraceful, let me provide you with the definition of a Ponzi scheme:

A fraudulent investing scam that promises high rates of return at little risk to investors. The scheme generates returns for older investors by acquiring new investors. This scam actually yields the promised returns to earlier investors, as long as there are more new investors.

What John McCain actually said was a “disgrace” was the fact that Social Security has been allowed to degenerate into a massive Ponzi scheme, in which new investors are (forcibly!) bilked into paying off the older investors before the whole thing collapses.

Now, if Barack Obama wants to come out and say, “I intend to preserve Social Security as a doomed Ponzi scheme that will leave younger workers with nothing, and I will defy anyone who attempts to reform this broken system that would be illegal if anyone other than the government were perpetuating it,” fine.

Otherwise, Barack Obama is villifying John McCain – and claiming that “deception is all he has left” – when in reality HE is the slimy deceiver who ought to be pointed out as a villian by his own twisted standards.

Barack Obama is telling a shockingly perverted lie about John McCain even as he hypocritically calls McCain’s integrity into question.

According to an analysis by the TNS Media Intelligence Campaign Media Analysis Group (TNSMI/CMAG) and the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project, 77% of Barack Obama’s ads are negative, compared to only 56% of John McCain’s ads being negative.  And Obama is complaining about McCain going negative?

Barack Obama is the political equivalent of a five year old, who punches another kid, then cries like a an immature little baby when he gets punched back, and runs off to tell his teacher a pack lies to try to get the other kid punished.

Given this, and given what Democrats tried to do to Sarah Palin through vicious and hateful bogus attacks, I hope voters tell Obama what to go do with himself come November.

The one thing this country can do without is a lying Whiner-in-Chief.