Romney's Ponzi Phobia

When it comes to Social Security, Republicans should stop treating seniors like the feeble-minded demographic portrayed in commercials written by 13-year-olds on Madison Avenue.

It’s like the home security commercial targeting seniors for a medical alert pendant to be worn around the neck. White-haired “Mom” didn’t want one because “it was for “some old person.” But daughter, seen patting Mom’s hand, “talked Mom into it.” Next we see “Mom” carrying a basket of laundry down a flight of uncarpeted stairs without holding the handrail. Sure enough, Mom’s lying at the bottom of the staircase pressing her alert button because she’s fallen, broken her hip and can’t get up because “the pain was terrible.” “Mom” and daughter are so glad that she was wearing her alert and could summon help.

You expect to see a disclaimer at the end: “Don’t try this at home. These are actors who are paid to behave stupidly. You could hurt yourself.”

Madison Avenue convinced the marketing geniuses at the security company that they can sell more medical alerts by scaring seniors even if it insults them. I don’t patronize a company run by upstarts who think senior is synonymous with senile. I doubt that many seniors do.

Gov. Mitt Romney and political commentators, such as Karl Rove and Dick Morris, are treating seniors as condescendingly as the commercial. To hear them tell it, if Gov. Rick Perry calls Social Security a “Ponzi Scheme,” seniors will have a seizure, and press a political alert hanging around our neck, which will connect us to the Obama campaign.

Seniors didn’t put Barack Hussein Obama in the White House. Those of us 65 and over are the only voting bloc who chose McCain over Obama—and by eight percentage points.

Obama’s disapproval rating is at 55 percent and his approval rating is 44 percent. It means that other voting blocs are beginning to wise up to what seniors knew in 2008. Seniors are the least likely group to vote for Obama in 2012.

For one thing, we rejected Obama’s outrageous and vague promise to fundamentally transform the greatest nation in history. And certainly not by a community organizer with a resume thinner than our hair who thinks voting “absent” is leadership and that America should repent for its greatness.

Our sight and hearing may be diminished, but we still know bovine scatology when we smell it.

Seniors deal with hard truth every day. Many of us handle it without our beloved spouse at our side. Health and financial concerns are more pressing. We live on a fixed income and still know the checkbook has to balance. We’re not the demographic maxing out credit cards and living beyond our means. Many dear old friends reside only in our memories. We know that our days dwindle down to a precious few. But it doesn’t mean that our minds have departed.

We certainly can handle the truth that Social Security isn’t sustainable for our children and grandchildren. We know that without a major restructuring, it will remain a pyramid scheme deficient of funds and contributors, a sham promise of retirement security for future generations.

The Social Security trustees released a 244-page report on Monday revealing the gravity of the situation. Page 13 states that payroll tax contributions for 2010 were $544.8 billion; total expenditures were $584.9 billion. That’s a $40 billion deficit. The Department of Labor released a report on Monday stating that there are only 1.5 workers supporting Social Security for every one recipient.

During the Republican debate on Monday night, Romney again accused Perry of scaring seniors by calling Social Security a “Ponzi Scheme.” Where does Romney get the idea that we were clueless until Perry mentioned it?

What is over the top is Romney’s pretense or delusion that Perry coined the term. Stanley Kurtz of National Review cites scores of uses of the term by Republicans and Democrats, academics, and journalists, long enough for Romney to have heard it long before Perry said it. Kurtz concludes in “Perry and the Ponzis”:

Our historical tour of the claim that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme confirms what we already knew: Rick Perry’s remarks are uncharacteristically bold for a politician, most especially a candidate in the midst of a presidential race. Yet Perry’s Ponzi-scheme claim is in no way unprecedented. On the contrary, the Ponzi comparison has been a staple of conservative warnings about Social Security’s financial soundness for decades.

So the question today is not simply whether Rick Perry will be punished or rewarded for showing the honesty even many liberal commentators once pined for. The more interesting issue raised by this historical investigation may be the fate of the Democratic Party and the media. Where today are the liberal and centrist Democrats who only yesterday called Social Security a Ponzi scheme and supported bold reforms? Where now are the columnists and editors at Newsweek and the New York Times willing to reward truth-tellers and to criticize reporters who cover for cowardly politicians? The fate of Rick Perry’s blunt talk may tell us more than we want to know, not only about Social Security, but also about who we are and what we have become.

What scares most seniors is that our country will be lying at the bottom of the stairs, broken and unable to get up if it remains in the hands of Barack Obama.

If Mormons are a little touchy about the “P” word...

http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&biw=1600&bih=687&source=hp&q=James+P+Lewis+Ponze+Mormon

... it’s probably because so many are perched upon “The Ladder”.

Got Affinity Fraud?

The refusal of some “conservatives” to even want to discuss SS is nothing short of moral cowardice. It’s like during the thirties turning a deaf ear to Churchill while he was warning the world about Hitler. Ignoring the truth will only make things worse. The politician who ignores the Ponzi scheme of SS as well as pandering to the public is also a moral coward.

>>moral cowardice.

Uhuh. Kinda like not wanting to talk about Penny Pritzker... or how how her GeeOpie Fithcally Conthervative counterpart (the Godfather of Subprime) bought himself an ambassadorship...

Best Rats and RINOs money could buy.

...and how they all manufactured "progress" for America out of demoralized Liar Loan a$$paper machete.

And this incessant harping and carping about Ponzi schemes rather than discussing sensible reforms adds nothing constructive to an issue that needs to be addressed.

(And I continue to be amazed how almost no one wants to discuss Medicaid and Medicare, two much bigger future liabilities than SS.)

Seniors aren't scared off by much.

I mean, hell ... we've done and probably used successfully a few of the illegal or unethical practices ourselves at one time or another.

So this, "stay away from the Ponzi" phraseology is laughable at best.

Once we start collecting SS we learn to tell younger people not to lose their jobs, we need the money.

Republicans will do well to use one syllable words and speak the truth.

SS IS a Ponzi scheme and it DOES require more and more contributors to stay afloat and it IS already collapsed ... it just doesn't know it yet.

I listen to a lot of Radio Classics on SIRIUS XM radio and I often hear WW2 era commercials about saving fat and cooking grease and turning it in and other like commercials.

Folks, we're strong enough to go there again and we're smart enough to do it quickly.

The politicians are too afraid to spell it out in simple words.

SS is a Ponzi scheme and it must be halted soon.

Technically Social Security isn't a Ponzi Scheme.

With a Ponzi Scheme you give the grifter your money voluntarily.
With Social Security the 'G'_riftertakes it without our okay.

So now instead of a 'white collar' Fraud case, we now have Strong Armed Robbery!

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