Free Republic

... don’t believe the fact that Hoffman is a social conservative was the reason for his loss, but when it comes to priorities, Simon makes a point worth considering: Hoffman’s capital “C” Conservative campaign tried to separate itself from the majority parties by making a big deal of the social issues. He was all upset that Scozzafava was pro-gay marriage, seemingly as upset as he was with her support for the stimulus plan. The majority of Americans are conservative — not just on matters of fiscal policy, but also on many social issues. After all, in the last presidential campaign...

As social media become more popular, it is inevitable that enterprising politicians will use it promote themselves, connect with constituents, and garner votes. The White House has a blog, several Senators and House members tweet, and elected officials and candidates at all levels of government are using social media to get out their messages. But just as use of social media by voters is coming into conflict with existing election laws, some politicians are discovering that their use of social media may clash — or at least create possible problems — with existing campaign and government disclosure laws. Last summer,...

Contrary to what the Left and their media minions told Americans in 2005 when President George W. Bush wanted to reform Social Security, the nation's largest entitlement program is now projected to run deficits for at least the next two years. In an article on the subject published Sunday, the Associated Press mysteriously hid the seriousness of this revelation while never once mentioning the Republican push to solve this problem four years ago, or that Democrats in January 2006 -- including Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) -- actually applauded the death of the previous year's reform efforts.

WASHINGTON – Big job losses and a spike in early retirement claims from laid-off seniors will force Social Security to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes the next two years, the first time that's happened since the 1980s. The deficits — $10 billion in 2010 and $9 billion in 2011 — won't affect payments to retirees because Social Security has accumulated surpluses from previous years totaling $2.5 trillion. But they will add to the overall federal deficit.

ATLANTA (Reuters) - U.S. health authorities are turning to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter in a bid to prepare people to be vaccinated against the pandemic H1N1 virus. But efforts to distribute accurate information about the dangers of swine flu and the importance of vaccination are hampered by the sheer complexity of the message that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aims to convey. For a start, the vaccine will not be ready for widespread distribution until mid-October, after the traditional flu season has begun. The U.S. government hopes to target around 50 percent of...

Congress may confiscate every state pension fund into the bankrupt social security system. Indications that this strategy is being discussed in Washington have come in to us from several sources over the last few days. Tonight, a correspondent who has just come home from a Tea Party Townhall Meeting in Salado, Texas with US Representative John Carter (R-Round Rock) issued the warning. She said, "Representative Carter informed the crowd that talk has been bandied about Congress to appropriate every state's pension plans into the bankrupt Social Security System." She is absolutely 100% sure that she understood him correctly. Dear readers,...

Bachus: Social Security may face deficitLegislator predicts progam could be out of money in two years By Tommy Stevenson Associate Editor Last Modified: Wednesday, August 19, 2009 at 9:39 a.m. TUSCALOOSA | Social Security could face a deficit within two years, according to U.S. Rep. Spencer Bachus who met with The Tuscaloosa News editorial board Tuesday. “The situation is much worse than people realize, especially because of the problems brought on by the recession, near depression,” said Bachus, R-Vestavia Hills, in an interview with the Tuscaloosa News editorial board. Bachus, the ranking member of the House Committee on Financial Services,...

Obama Used 39 Social Security Numbers?topic posted Mon, July 27, 2009 - 5:43 PM "Dr. Taitz brings forward allegations that Barrack Obama is unlawfully holding the position as President of the United States. She currently is representing approx. 170 military members including commissioned officers in a lawsuit to force Barrack Obama to produce his birth cirtificate, proving that he is eligible to hold the position of President."

WASHINGTON, July 30, 2009 – Army Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV discovered the power of social networking in 2007 when he was the U.S. military’s top spokesman in Iraq. It was “probably one of the toughest times in Iraq,” Caldwell recalled of his time as Multinational Force Iraq’s deputy chief of staff for strategic effects. Mounting U.S. casualties and sectarian violence dominated the news headlines. Caldwell, who commanded the 82nd Airborne Division before arriving in Baghdad, knew the coverage wasn’t telling the whole story. “Men and women were doing incredibly great things every day, and not just heroic things,”...

We estimate fiscal 2009 to have a deficit of more than $2 trillion and incoming revenues will only make up less than half of that. In spite of the protestations of our Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner that the deficit will be reduced, our president guarantees $1 trillion annual deficits as far as the eye can see. Cuts will never come and the dollar will fall because that is the way the elitists want it to be. Only from the ashes of economic and financial collapse can the new world order rise. Our government says one thing and does another. They...

Just days before he is to meet with Pope Benedict XVI on his first trip to Italy, President Obama told FOX News that the Catholic Church's long tradition of social justice has had a "profound influence" on him. President Obama said the Catholic Church's long tradition of social justice has had a "profound influence" on him -- just days before he is to meet with Pope Benedict XVI on his first trip to Italy.

In an effort to understand a Marxist bent on an end run at ‘global social justice’ we might define the words “freedom” and “justice”, relative to the following postulates: 1.) Marxism and Freedom are mutually exclusive -a given. 2.) “If you have socialism, you only require justice”. (A Presumed Tenant) On to the definitions…. Freedom is: Pretty simple. Everything (including opportunity) that is not restricted by law/code/agreement and that doesn’t infringe upon, nor unduly burden, others. * Note here that attacks on the word have been rather fruitless; hence the Democrats, Liberals, and Progressives have stopped using the word in...

You may have more Facebook friends as the years go by, but when it comes to your close friends, you lose about half and replace them with new ones after about seven years, new social research suggests. As a result, the size of your social network stays about the same.

Note: The following text is a quote: Social Science Research Assists Navigation of ‘Human Terrain’ By Navy Lt. Jennifer Cragg Special to American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, May 18, 2009 – The Defense Department is funding research to help warfighters learn and adapt to the social and cultural norms in their deployment areas, a Navy program officer said in a May 13 webcast of “Armed with Science: Research and Applications for the Modern Military” on Pentagon Web Radio. “It's been a shift in the thinking of the Department of Defense away from conventional warfare practices to the asymmetric and irregular...

As Social Security’s critics know, the government program is robed in myths, for example, that it is “insurance” financed with a “trust fund,” paying “guaranteed” benefits “as a matter of earned right.” These myths have given most Americans a mistaken understanding of Social Security. As a result, they perniciously affected policymaking in the past and severely constrain reform options today. Beginning in 1935, when Social Security was enacted, the program’s administrators made a huge effort to shape the public’s understanding of and beliefs about it. In speeches, articles, pamphlets, and other mass-circulation literature, they described Social Security as “insurance” under...

Message from The National Republican Trust PAC From Scott Wheeler Dear Supporter: Yesterday John Kerry sent out an e-mail to fellow Democrats attacking our ad exposing Obama's unbelievable plan to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens. Kerry claimed that the Republican Party is " depraved" and cited our ad. He then said our ad connects Obama to "9/11 attacker Mohammed Atta." Our ad does not "connect" Obama to 9/11. We say that Mohammed Atta easily got a driver's license in Florida. We say that if Obama implements his plan, it will be easy for terrorists to get driver's licenses....

Obama Wants Social Security for Illegals Added: 1 day ago

In recent years, as Wall Street boomed, Americans often dismissed Europe as a place for languorous meals and vacations, not economic innovation. London remained a financial hub, of course, but it was often treated dismissively — as a flashy aberration pumped up by petrodollars from Russia and the Gulf, an exception to the otherwise somnolent Continent.

The long-serving president of New York City's powerful teachers' union was tapped last week to lead the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers - a post from which she'll have ample opportunity to push her education agenda on the national level. "Imagine schools that are open all day and offer after-school and evening recreational activities and homework assistance," she said. "And suppose the schools included child care and dental, medical and counseling clinics." A one-stop nanny state, in other words - owned and operated by Randi Weingarten & Co. Weingarten's push for all-purpose schools is hardly surprising, of course. What...

Blue Dogs look beyond '08 electionBy PATRICK O'CONNOR | 6/11/08 4:50 AM EST Democrat Jim Cooper is focused on the federal government’s swelling financial obligations. Photo: John Shinkle Rep. Jim Cooper never misses a chance to talk about the federal government’s swelling financial obligations. But the Tennessee Democrat clams up when asked about a conversation he had on the topic with his party’s likely presidential nominee, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama. “I’ll let his campaign speak to his position on this issue,” Cooper says. Cooper’s silence is understandable: Although the party that takes power next year will have to address deficit...

Vote Tallies1935 Social Security Act Proposal Introduced in Congress Shortly after the 74th Congress convened in January 1935, President Roosevelt sent his "Economic Security Bill" to Capitol Hill. The Administration proposal was transmitted to the Congress on January 17, 1935 and it was introduced that same day in the Senate by Senator Robert Wagner (D-NY) and in the House by Congressman Robert Doughton (D-NC) and David Lewis (D-MD). The bill was referred to Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways & Means Committee. Hearings The House Ways & Means Committee held hearings on the bill from January 21, 1935 through...

Maybe the brilliant mind of the Free Republic members can advise on this. I run a genealogy site for the family. In here we post information obtained from the Social Security Death Index (SSDI), published by the U.S. Government. Let's say someone passes on and their spouse is receiving benefits. The SSDI publishes the SS# of the passed family member. Is it possible for the spouse to have complications arising from the theft of their loved ones ID?

Senator Barack Obama fought back Saturday against accusations from his rivals that he had displayed a profound misunderstanding of small-town values, in a flare-up that left him on the defensive before a series of primaries that could test his ability to win over white voters in economically distressed communities. For a second day, Mr. Obama sought to explain his remarks at a recent San Francisco fund-raiser that small-town Pennsylvania voters, bitter over their economic circumstances, “cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them” as a way to explain their frustrations. Acknowledging Saturday that “I didn’t...

Boys and their toys? It's biological, not social By Nic Fleming, Science Correspondent Last Updated: 4:01pm BST 07/04/2008 Boys prefer playing with cars to dolls because of basic biological differences rather than social pressures, scientists say. The males monkeys played with the 'boys' toys while the females played with 'boys' and 'girls' toys Researchers observed young male monkeys spent more time playing with vehicles than with cuddly toys. They believe this suggests that in most cases boys have an innate predisposition for masculine toys, which is then reinforced by what they learn from their parents, friends and wider society. Dr...

The full title of this book is--CLASS AND SCHOOLS: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform To Close The Black-White Achievement Gap by Richard Rothstein INTRODUCTION This book discusses the black-white achievement gap and how to eliminate it. Dr. Rothstein no longer believes schools are the answer; he has other remedies. While this book was published in 2004, it has the imprimatur of both Economic Policy Institute and the Teachers College of Columbia University. Such formal recognition suggests educators are changing their focus in respect to the genesis of both the black-white and social class achievement gaps. SUMMARY Professor Rothstein on...

...We couldn't agree more. Mr. Obama and former North Carolina senator John Edwards have suggested one intriguing way of addressing the shortfall between what Social Security is expected to take in and what it has promised to pay out in benefits to retirees and others. They have floated, though without specifics, the idea of tinkering with the cap on wages subject to Social Security tax, currently some $97,500. Removing the cap would more than make up for the Social Security shortfall, but it would also amount to a rather hefty tax hike (12.4 percent, considering both the employee and employer's...

The newest sensation at the center of Hollywood's fashion scene isn't a famous designer or starlet. It's a 56-year-old homeless man who spends his days dancing on roller skates.... In a plot twist worthy of Tinseltown, Mr. Jermyn now has a clothing label named after him. Since it was introduced last month, "The Crazy Robertson" brand of T-shirts and sweatshirts, created by a trio of 23-year-olds, has flown off the shelves at Kitson, a haunt of tabloid stars like Paris Hilton. The clothes feature stylized images of Mr. Jermyn, including one design -- available on a $98 hoodie -- that...

The good news is that there's no need to weaken it. We can shore up Social Security for the future without cutting benefits -- or raising contribution rates. The program can be brought into close actuarial balance over the long run with just three revenue-enhancing changes that are desirable in any case: 1.Gradually increase the maximum amount of earnings covered by Social Security so that the traditional goal -- covering 90 percent of all earnings -- is once again achieved. This change would affect only the 6 percent of earners who make more than the maximum covered amount (now just...

$13 trillion deficit looms for Social SecurityTuesday, September 25th 2007, 4:00 AM WASHINGTON - The Bush administration said in a new report yesterday that Social Security is facing a $13.6 trillion shortfall in coming years and that delaying reforms is not fair to younger workers. A report issued by the Treasury Department said that some combination of benefit cuts and tax increases will need to be considered to permanently fix the funding shortfall. White House officials stressed that the President is opposed to new taxes. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he hoped the new report would help find common ground...

Science Daily — Apes bite and try to break a tube to retrieve the food inside while children follow the experimenter's example to get inside the tube to retrieve the prize, showing that even before preschool, toddlers are more sophisticated in their social learning skills than their closest primate relatives, according to a report published in the 7 September issue of the journal Science. Chimpanzees participated in a comprehensive battery of tasks comparing their physical and social cognitive abilities to those of 2-year-old human children. (Credit: Image courtesy of MPI EVAN/JGI-USA) This innate proficiency allows them to excel in...

BASIC CONCEPTS This book is now 5 years old and has yet to receive a formal, academic review. Payne’s last book, A Framework For Understanding Poverty, also never received an academic review. In spite of academic inattention, both books are popular. The Understanding Poverty book sold over 1,000,000 copies. In Hidden Rules of Class At Work both Dr. Payne and her co-author, Don Krabill, explore social class as an important facet of workplace adjustment and success. To make their point they use a mental model for discussion---a triangle comprised of resources, connections and hidden rules. By using this oversimplification, they...

A site for christians to have community together... growth, etc..

People wonder how government could ignore problems like those that led to the Minneapolis bridge collapse, but the truth is that officials have long been turning a blind eye to many looming disasters besides the nation’s roughly 75,000 structurally deficient highway spans. Consider our Social Security system. Each year, the nonpartisan Social Security Trustees details the program’s sorry financial prospects. The latest report concluded that the program — which consumes more than one-fifth of the total budget — will begin paying out more in benefits than it takes in as taxes in just 10 years. At that time, Social Security...

THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: Today I want to discuss something that's very dear to my heart both as a practicing Catholic and a patriotic American. It's the principle of Subsidiarity, found in the 'Catechism of the Catholic Church,' which should be of particular interest to all Catholic Americans. Why? Because in this principle we find the central point where our Catholic faith and American citizenship intersect. Our American government was founded on three basic principles. Yet most Americans today are only familiar with one. The first principle, and most commonly understood, is the principle of "no taxation without representation." In other...

Social Security benefit payments soon will exceed payroll tax revenues. Beginning in about a dozen years, these annual cash-flow deficits will begin to climb rapidly, soaring to $100 billion in 2015 and $500 billion in 2025. The Social Security Trust Fund is a deception. It contains no genuine assets, only government bonds--IOUs that have no value beyond a promise to impose higher taxes on future workers. "When the government issues a bond to one of its own accounts, it hasn't purchased anything or established a claim against another entity or person. It is simply creating a form of IOU from...

Picture this: A rotund, theatrical politician from Harlem and a wiry, introverted policy-wonk from Shreveport sitting elbow to elbow on the House floor, shuffling between each other's offices, passing paper between staffs. Two men from opposite ends of the political spectrum, they are joined in secrecy on a project that just about everyone else in Washington considers doomed to failure. Charlie Rangel and Jim McCrery are on a mission to rescue Social Security from bankruptcy. Conventional Washington wisdom long ago wrote the death notice on Social Security reform. What Republican would want to touch a project that blew up in...

In their first debate, staged at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Republican presidential rivals vied to pay homage to the late president even as they criticized -- or at best, ignored -- the current Republican in the White House, George W. Bush. Several candidates made reference to the Bush administration's mismanagement of the four-year-old war in Iraq, as if that were a given. Arizona Sen. John McCain defended his support for the war now, saying "it's on the right track." But he added, as he does routinely on the campaign trail, "The war was terribly mismanaged and we now have...

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Social Security trust funds are expected to be exhausted by 2041, a year later than last year's estimate, while the Medicare trust fund is projected to go broke by 2019, also one year later than 2006 projections, according to the latest annual report from the funds' trustees. While the latest forecasts suggest a minor reprieve for the programs' fiscal prospects, the trustees remained pessimistic about the long-term health of the nation's entitlement programs. "The financial condition of the Social Security and Medicare programs remains problematic," the trustees said in the report released Monday. "We believe their...

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama accused the Bush administration of "social Darwinism" that leaves every man and woman struggling. "It's a strategy that we've seen this administration pursue over the last six years, that basically says government has no role to play in making sure that America is prosperous for all people and not just some," Obama said ... The Illinois senator said the attempt to "divvy up the government into individual tax breaks" may be tempting, but government research and investment is what has made advances possible in the United States. Obama, John Edwards and Hillary Rodham Clinton addressed...

Madam Speaker, Don’t Forget about Your Grandchildren... Pelosi is content just to ignore the problems with Social Security. By Carrie Lukas Nancy Pelosi isn’t just the first female Speaker of the House; she’s also the first grandmother to serve as Speaker. After being handed the gavel, Pelosi invited her grandchildren up to the podium, while imploring fellow Members: “Let’s hear it for the children. We’re here for the children.” While Speaker Pelosi’s talk about “the children” may be political posturing, she’s actually making an important point: Policymakers should evaluate policies based on how they affect future generations. America would be...

We often argue about left/right or conservative/progressive (liberal is a misnomer in the classical sense). I thought a little diversion from the standard debates might be interesting. The link to the Political Compass will allow anyone interested to see where their beliefs fall. It assesses your beliefs both economically and socially, take the test to see where you fall. My score: Economic Left/Right: 6.00 Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -1.33 I don't claim to be another Milton Friedman, but my score places my political compass beliefs close to his, far right economically and moderate socially.

I’ve been criticized, most recently by Larry Hunter in the New York Sun, for my January 25 article on National Review Online arguing that conservatives need to maintain a strategic perspective on the rising tax burdens that will follow from a failure to fix Social Security. Hunter wrote: "Unfortunately, some conservatives don't appreciate the prudence of a strategic retreat. Illustrative is the vice president for policy and economics at the Independent Women's Forum, Carrie Lukas, who in a January 25 article on National Review Online attacked Mr. Pence as 'unprincipled' and 'foolish' for rejecting new taxes. Shame on her." First,...

Local Iraqi leaders, members of local Iraqi Security Forces and U.S. Marines and soldiers serving in western Iraq celebrate the grand opening of a bridge that stretches across the Euphrates River, Feb. 1, 2007, in Ramana, Iraq. The celebration was complete with a ribbon cutting ceremony, followed by a feast hosted by the mayor of Ramana, one of the many Euphrates River cities that lie here in western Al Anbar Province, Iraq. Local sheiks along with Lt. Col. Scott C. Shuster, commanding officer of Task Force 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, a Twentynine Palms, Calif.-based battalion, and the mayors...

Social Security Agreement with Mexico Released After 3-1/2 Year Freedom of Information Act Battle January 4, 2007 (Washington, DC) – After numerous refusals over three and a half years, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has released the first known public copy of the U.S.-Mexico Social Security Totalization Agreement. The government made the disclosure in response to lawsuits filed under the Freedom of Information Act by TREA Senior Citizens League, a 1.2 million member nonpartisan seniors advocacy group. The Totalization Agreement could allow millions of illegal Mexican workers to draw billions of dollars from the U.S. Social Security Trust Fund.

INTRODUCTON:This book is about social class. A excellent, well written, professional review written can be found HERE For those wanting to review the author’s professional and personal biography, you can find that HERE The purpose of this book review is to introduce a few basic concepts. To do this I have summarized and simplified a complex and nuanced book. Accordingly, this book review can not replace the actual text. There are two matters that need brief mention before I begin. First, the author is not only a British writer but a public intellectual. His works include both fiction and non-fiction....

The North Korean regime is starving its own people and sending them to concentration camps, and no one gives a damn. Folks, I've just watched a recurrent documentary in the Discovery Times Channel (DTC) entitled Children of the Secret State. The DTC broadcasts this documentary regularly but this is the first time I was able to watch the whole thing. I found it disturbing. What's happening in North Korea is another Holocaust, where hundreds of thousands of peoples, often entire families, are left to die of hunger, mostly for imaginary political crimes. Those who resist are carted into concentration camps...

With the approach of the crucial mid-term elections, and especially after the media obsession with the internet correspondence of Congressman Mark Foley, numerous liberal commentators eagerly anticipate a shattering crack-up of the conservative movement. While the outcome of the November balloting remains very much in doubt, these gleeful predictions of GOP disaster demonstrate an ignorant misunderstanding of the essential nature of the Republican coalition, and grossly exaggerate the gap between “religious” and “economic” conservatives. Paul Krugman, for instance, New York Times columnist, bestselling author and Princeton professor, recently published a piece called “Things Fall Apart.” In it, he declared: “At...

The Pledge I’d Like to See Every Political Candidate Take I, ________________________________________, upon signing this document, do hereby swear and affirm under penalty of forfeiture of office and wages, that I shall: 1.) Make no public statement which demeans, denigrates, or defames any active member, unit, or branch of the U.S. armed services, or the military as a whole, except in cases where an individual soldier or group of soldiers has been tried and convicted of committing a criminal offense or offenses.

The State Duma on Friday gave preliminary approval to a 2007 budget that is expected to be 25 percent bigger than this year's, prompting worries of overspending and higher inflation as next year's elections near. The hike comes on top of a 40 percent increase this year, as the government spends windfall revenues created by the bonanza of high world oil prices. By a 343-94 vote with no abstentions, deputies passed the draft budget on first reading. Budget spending is to swell to 5.46 trillion rubles ($205 billion), or 17.5 percent of the country's gross domestic product. With expected revenues...

Three years ago, some dismissed social networking Web sites as a fad, a place where the geek-minded could fluff their personality on a Web page. They’re now the hottest thing on the Web, with almost daily word of older companies suddenly becoming hip by jumping in. On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal, citing “people familiar with the matter,” reported that Yahoo YHOO is in serious talks to buy the popular social networking site Facebook.com for as much as $1 billion. Investors and companies are jumping into the business in a frenzy not seen, many observers say, since the days of...