Joe Nation
Joe Nation's JournalThe function of government is to serve the people
Government is not, and never has been a "business". Treating the levers of power like a commercial enterprise simply invites corruption and favoritism into the process. I ask you, what is the product of government and what would be the return on investment? And it always comes down to you and I, the people, the ultimate shareholders in this instance. No business operates like that. Government is fundamentally about serving all of the people and has no higher responsibility. Service is a dirty word in politics these days and yet is at the core of everything a good governance would stand for. Service, we need to reintroduce that concept back into our leadership or else we will see an endless line of Donald Trump wannabes well into the future.
From the outside, America seems to be having a nervous breakdown
From irrational behavior to unpredictable outbursts to inexplicable attacks on our friends and allies, the America that the rest of the world sees seems to be having a nervous breakdown of a sort. Whether America is cuddling up to dictators and tyrants or doing self-harm to its own economy and hurting others in the process, we have clearly lost the ability to function rationally on the world stage. A routine wellness check is already long over due. What the American public needs to do at this point is an intervention.
The SSA has fulfilled the SS Fairness Act for me already
Not only did they send me full amount of my WEP reduced monthly payment from 2024, they also increased my monthly payment by 40%. People complain about the slow service and long wait times experienced through the SSA but my experience has been that they are very prompt and competent. I guess I just expected worse and got the best.
Has anyone else qualified for and received their back payments and updated monthly payments yet? I have only been on SS since my birthday in October. My spouse will not begin collecting SS for another three years. As I said, my SS payment was reduced by 40% due to my state pension and the WEP and my spouse wasn't even going to bother with her SS money because it was reduced to almost nothing due to her state pension. Now she can look forward to around another $1,000 a month when she starts collecting SS.
I have never liked bullies
From my earliest memories, I have always been sickened by bullies. Maybe I was bullied as a kid or maybe I grew up with a bully as a parent. I have always been a tall intimidating adult. A gentle giant perhaps and couldn't imagine bullying someone smaller than myself. Bullying sickened me to the point that I would step in and help smaller kids being bullied by bigger kids when I was young.
Seeing the bully-in-chief drive a wedge between this country and our trading partners and strategic allies using the same bullying tactics a spoiled rotten 5-year old might use makes me feel exactly like I am witnessing psychotic bully on a scale hard to even conceive of until now.
Witnessing this country becoming the bully of the world and aligning itself with murderous dictators and openly hostile states makes me ashamed to even admit that I am an American. First he divided families, then he divided us from our closest neighbors and allies, now he wants to take down burgeoning democracies. We need to shutdown Washington with protests so large, that we take our country back.
A Social Security adjustment worth considering
One thing I never hear in regard to making adjustments to the Social Security system to increase solvency, is increasing the Social Security contribution limit on earnings. It does increase annually already but only marginally. Currently, any amount of earnings above $176,100 isn't subject to Social Security taxes. Why not increase that to 500K or 1M or 10M? Here is some further explanation of just how the system works.
The Social Security contribution limit for 2025 is $176,100, which is the maximum amount of earnings subject to Social Security tax. This limit increases each year to keep pace with wage increases.
How does this limit work?
Only earnings up to the maximum limit are subject to Social Security tax.
The Social Security tax rate is 12.4% of earnings.
Employees have 6.2% of earnings deducted from their paychecks, and their employers pay the remaining 6.2%.
Self-employed individuals generally pay 12.4% of their net self-employment income.
Both high earning individuals and employers would have to pay 6.2 percent on the additional earnings spreading the cost across both entities. I have no estimate of how much this might increase the coffers of the Social Security system but my guess is that it would increase the solvency of the system substantially. You might sweeten the deal by reducing the self-employed amount to something south of 12.4 percent. Anyway, has anyone ever heard this solution proposed by anyone in Congress?
These townhall meetings are pointless
What I mean is that all these townhall meetings held by Republicans are just a silly penance the right is willing to endure while pushing through their agenda in the service of dear leader. It's a stalling tactic. They clutch their pearls and run away and spout nonsense talking points but have no intention of straying from the path that is dictated by their orange Jesus.
Townhalls may have meant something once upon a time but those days are long gone. Don't get too excited about the MAGA base turning on the people they elected. Their base is irrelevant and no longer needed. These elected repukes are simply taking one for the team at these townhall meetings. Like most psychphants, they don't realize that they too are in line for the same irrevancy they have bestowed on their voters. It's just a matter of time.
I think we have to get past the "business as usual" politics mindset or we will find ourselves on the outside looking in as we become unrecognizable even to ourselves. I believe this monster will require the "pitchforks and torches" approach if we want our country back. It's just my opinion of course but I just want people to realize that we do indeed have the power if we choose to wield it.
I believe that we've reached the endgame
This mad dash towards isolationism, autocracy, the dictatorial bullying of our trading partners and defense alliances, will be the end of America as we know it. This isn't hyperbole. Look at the European Union and tell me I'm overacting. This isn't just a rough patch between us and the rest of the world. This an inflection point where every American has to decide what kind of future we want for our kids.
We have an administration that is by any definition an internal enemy tearing apart our security, our economy, our reputation, and our very freedoms in order to create a vision of America none of us wants to see or would even recognize and would undoubtedly have our forefathers rolling over in their graves. If we sit back and do nothing, we will look back at this moment and wish that we had done more to extricate our country from these psychopathic lunatics much sooner. It only gets more costly as they tighten their grip on power.
With each passing day, with each normalization of the absurd, with every act of compliance, we cement one more brick in the wall of Autocracy. It will be much easier to stand up now than later after all people of good conscience have been removed from the military, the government, and our civil rights have been outlawed. The country needs to grind to a halt NOW!!
The Constitution is ignored daily by this administration. That means that extra-Constitutional actions are open to both sides. We can't let the Constitution hamper our responses out of deference to the past while the other side takes a paper shredder to it from the inside. The White House must be surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people every day until we get these clowns out of office. Paralyze the functions of government until no actions can be taken and keep the pressure up relentlessly and make our voices heard.
How will they respond? With violence. At that point, we have them and they lose. The moment is now. 2025 will be remembered as the year we either fought for our country or turned it over to the likes of Trump and Musk. You decide.
The Infant-in-Chief sickens me
This is Trumpty Dumpty's 4th flip-flop on Ukraine in less than 10 days. There is no plan, no strategy, no grand bargain at play here, there is only a single moron, his cabal of psychophants, and an entire republican party of cowards, boot lickers, moron worshippers, collaborators, and a Supreme Court completely willing to flush the U.S. Constitution down the toilet.
We have already lost our biggest trading partners, our regional allies, our European allies, all respect America earned shedding blood defending democracy around the globe, and we've lost NATO --The strongest miltary alliance in history. We are now allied with Putin, a murderous dictator and lying psychopath. Less than one and a half months into this morons second term, we are far worse off than we have been in the past several decades thanks to this infantile buffoon.
The danger here isn't from a foreign power. The danger here is the isolation and eventual Civil War that Trump will instigate as a way to cement himself in power. Our only saviors will have to be the military. Sounds far-fetched because we find it hard to imagine but civil war has happened before and it can easily happen again.
What are your thoughts? International conflict or civil conflict? Maybe both?
Any casual observer of US politics can see that our system of government is broken.
Our political system clearly isn't producing the best and the brightest leaders. Our standard of living is in serious decline while billionaires use our politicians like personal valets. We have less and less control over our two-party entrenched aristocracy. The entirety of the citizenry simply doesn't matter as much as one single billionaire.
In short, our system is broken and it isn't working for the vast majority of the country. Why is it this way? Money. Money in politics has become the drug on which our system feeds itself. Money is speech. Money and wealth are good. Money has corrupted the ideals of democracy until we can't even recognize the country we thought we lived in.
We have two choices if we want to recover all that we have lost. We have to either get money out of our political system or tear the system down brick-by-brick and start over. Anything less than that will only continue the decline of this great American experiment in democracy. It's either pitchforks or political reform. Pick your poison but do it fast.
Republican legislators are more afraid of losing their jobs than losing their country
Let that sink in for a moment and then get out there and protest. No one is coming to save us except us.
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Gender: Do not displayMember since: Mon May 27, 2013, 12:46 PM
Number of posts: 1,112