Losing the Social Security Battle

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PRESIDENT BUSH’S PLAN TO CREATE personal retirement accounts for Social Security, which seemed so promising a few months ago, is now officially floundering. Senate Republicans are now crafting a compromise proposal that takes personal accounts off the table. Meanwhile, House speaker Denny Hastert recently said “not this year” for Social Security reform. And Democrats remain united in their “just say no,” obstructionist strategy.

Despite all this, there’s still a path to victory for reformers–though little chance of instant gratification. If the debate over the past months on Social Security has established anything, it is that the Ponzi financing scheme for Social Security–an invention of FDR and the architects of the New Deal–is living on borrowed time. The political momentum here and in dozens of other nations is on the side of the privatizers.

Let’s start with a proposition that seems increasingly self-evident: This is a fight for the long haul. The White House and Republican political strategists probably deluded themselves into believing that the stars were finally aligned to whip personal accounts through Congress this year. That calculus now appears to have been wrong. The conundrum for the White House has been how to rally even token Democratic support for modernizing Social Security.

For eight weeks now the White House has been romancing the few remaining moderate Democrats in Congress with compromises and concessions to gain even a tepid endorsement for personal accounts. Each overture has been spurned. Whether Republicans offer tax hikes, benefit cuts, add-on personal accounts paid for out of general revenues,
and even means-testing, the response has been the same: no to personal accounts. The left’s inalterable and irrational opposition to private accounts parallels their aversion to concepts like school vouchers. In both cases it seems to matter not a whit to congressional Democrats that the beneficiaries of reform would be the very minority and low-income workers they claim to champion.

In short, the national Democratic party has erected a Berlin Wall of opposition to meaningful Social Security reform. Many political analysts (myself included) believed that after having been wiped out in the last two elections because of their bullheaded obstructionism, Democrats would be in a more accommodating frame of mind. Nope. And despite all their recent casualties, they still have sufficient forces to go on obstructing.

Read the rest of the article: Losing the Social Security Battle by Stephen Moore

Best Buy Has Man Arrested for Using $2 Bills

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“Mike Bolesta of Baltimore thought he would protest Best Buy’s not-so-great customer service and pay his bill with 57 $2 bills. For his trouble he got to spend some time in the county lock-up.” From the article: “..Bolesta was contacted by the store, and was threated with police action if he did not pay the [installation] fee he was told before did not exist. As a sign of protest, Bolesta decided to pay using only $2 bills, which he has an abundance of because he asks his bank for them specifically. Unfortunately for him, the cashier did not seem to understand that the $2 bill is indeed legal US tender, since the bill itself is not often used. After rudely refusing to take the money, the cashier accepted the bills, only to mark them as though they were conterfeit.”

The Slashdot article is here: Man Arrested for Using $2 Bills

The original Baltimore Sun article is here: A tale of customer service, justice and currency as funny as a $2 bill
Page requires free registration or use this: bselig@dodgeit.com/bselig – thanks, bugmenot).

Discussion on morons.org about it: Morons.Org Discussion

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$2 at Taco Bell Story and corresponding Urban Legend Reference Page

Dvorak – Better than QWERTY

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I started using Dvorak at the start of the school year, September 2004 and tried to use it as much as possible. This meant that I would use it when typing anything that wasn’t too long. I was still too slow to type a paper or long email in an reasonable amount of time. But now I’ve been using it ever since and have gotten quite fast, though not quite as fast as I once was in QWERTY. I can still feel myself slowly improving and once I start practicing with a typing tutor (dvorak-ng) I’m sure that I’ll get faster than I was before. Typing in Dvorak is kind of cool. It’s still a relatively obscure term. It’s fun to watch when people try to type on my Dvorak keymap. Since I deleted Windows from my computer and solely use Linux, I had gotten very competent at using the bash (similar to DOS) prompt. Relearning the tightly engrained bash combinations (ls, cp, mv, cd, uptime, grep, etc, etc) proved to be the most challenging aspect of learning Dvorak.

Here’s a really good Dvorak resource: Introducing the Dvorak Keyboard

Edit (July 1st, 2005): I’m so fully switched over to Dvorak that now I have to almost hunt and peck to type in QWERTY!

Google Doubles GMail Storage Space and Adds More Features

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Neowin.net – Where unprofessional journalism looks better – Google Doubles GMail Storage Space

Google is slowly increasing the storage space. I’ve read that it will be up to 2GB (and maybe beyond…see below). I’m currently at 1083MB (and it is slowly increasing). Plus, there is now the ability to send emails with varying font sizes and colors in a rich text editor. This is on top of the free POP3 access. (And I’m hoping for IMAP support soon too. But the online interface is already so good that I don’t use any other email client anyway).

In other Google news they’ve made another addition to Google Labs: RideFinder

“Find a taxi, limousine or shuttle using real time position of vehicles.”

From Gmail’s new features:
G is for growth
Storage is an important part of email, but that doesn’t mean you should have to worry about it. To celebrate our one-year birthday, we’re giving everyone one more gigabyte. But why stop the party there? Our plan is to continue growing your storage beyond 2GBs by giving you more space as we are able. We know that email will only become more important in people’s lives, and we want Gmail to keep up with our users and their needs. From Gmail, you can expect more.

The Need to Update Social Security

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Written by JimLamb on his ourmedia blog. It was originally entitled: AA-AAA-AARP-ARGH!

The Social Security program is set up in what they used call a “Ponzi Scheme” — it robs young Peter to pay an aging Paul, a practice that is as illegal as all get-out, unless, of course, you are the government.

I’m thinking about starting an organization designed for people over age 55 who drink and drive. It’ called AA-AAA-AARP.

There may be just a whiff of humor within that alphabet soup proposal — but there is not much to laugh about in the AARP’s current propaganda media blitz re: the so-called “privatization” of Social Security. I have a vested interest in this fight: I am 58 years old, and I know full well that I will never get out of Social Security what I have put in to it. The SS program is set up in what they used call a “Ponzi Scheme,” sometimes called a “pyramid scheme” — a practice that is as illegal as all get-out, unless, of course, you are the government. (See SEC Ponzi reference below.)

First, understand that the money you and I “contribute” to Social Security is not going into a “lockbox.” (I put quotes around the word contribute because I am forced to give up this money; I do not have a choice.) Your money and my money is paying off people who have previously “contributed” to the bottomless money pit into which we generously toss our funds.

Statistically, and realistically, it just can’t continue …

Consider this: Just 50 years ago, there were more than a dozen workers for every retiree. That number has dropped dramatically. Here’s what SocialSecurity.org observes: “In 1950, there were 16 workers paying taxes into the system for every retiree who was taking benefits out of it. Today, there are a little more than three. By the time the baby boomers retire, there will be just two workers who will have to pay all the taxes to support every one retiree.”
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Google to fix blog noise problem

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Google is to create a search tool specifically for weblogs, most likely giving material generated by the self-publishing tools its own tab.

CEO Eric Schmidt made the announcement on Monday, at the JP Morgan Technology and Telecom conference. ‘Soon the company will also offer a service for searching Web logs, known as “blogs,”‘ reported Reuters.

It isn’t clear if weblogs will be removed from the main search results, but precedent suggests they will be. After Google acquired Usenet groups from Deja.com, it developed a unique user interface and a refined search engine, and removed the groups from the main index. After a sticky start, Usenet veterans welcomed the new interface. Google recently acquired Blogger, and sources suggest this is the most likely option.

Bloggers too are likely to welcome their very own tab as a legitimization of the publishing format. But many others will breathe a sigh of relief as blogs disappear from the main index. (continued on link below)

Source: The Register

I still think this is a great idea! Google was and is definitely getting clogged up with numerous weblogs linking to the same main article. Removing the weblogs from the main search index would allow the truly authoritative articles to be shown first. Then, should the searcher want commentary about an article he could go to Google’s Blog tab and find it. I wonder if they are thinking of developing their own blog search or if they will buy and intergrate Technorati. Either way I’m still looking forward to it.

—-Dear How Not To Blog,
Thanks for pointing out how old this article was. I didn’t even look at the article’s original publication date when I posted this. It was new news to me as of this morning. Regardless, I still think that this is an excellent idea. Why do you say that it is a “stupid idea?” Anyway, thanks for linking to my site. From such a “high quality site as yours” , I’m sure that I’ll move up quite a few places on Google (note sarcasm). By the way, your site is aptly named: Who runs a blog where comments are disabled??

Powerball Considers Raising Odds

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There have been so many winners that Powerball officials are considering raising the odds and effectively making it harder to win. If the current winning pace continues for the rest of the year, they stand to lose around $400 million. So why would making the Powerball harder to win draw more people to purchase tickets? “Frequent” winners result in relatively small jackpots. Raising the odds would make it harder to win and should, theoretically, result in bigger jackpots. And, I guess, big jackpots attract those people that don’t want to waste their money on the small money jackpots. Why spend $2 (or whatever it costs) to try and win $50 million when you can spend the same $2 and try and win $300 million. Granted, someone has to win eventually, but with the odds already at 1 in 120 million, you are much more likely to get struck by lightning (1 in 2.3 million) or writing a New York Times best seller (1 in 220) than win the lottery.

The Odds
Powerball jackpot winners on a streak
Powerball: Too Many Winners?