Free Republic

WASHINGTON -- Elfriede Rinkel's past as a Nazi concentration camp guard didn't keep her from collecting nearly $120,000 in U.S. Social Security benefits. Rinkel admitted to being stationed at the Ravensbrueck camp during World War II, where she worked with an attack dog trained by the SS, according to U.S. Justice Department records. She immigrated to California and married a German-born Jew whose parents had been killed in the Holocaust. She agreed to leave the U.S. in 2006 and remains the only woman the Justice Department's Nazi-hunting unit ever initiated deportation proceedings against. Yet after Rinkel departed, the Social Security...

On this day in 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs into law the Social Security Act. Press photographers snapped pictures as FDR, flanked by ranking members of Congress, signed into law the historic act, which guaranteed an income for the unemployed and retirees. FDR commended Congress for what he considered to be a "patriotic" act. Roosevelt had taken the helm of the country in 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression, the nation's worst economic crisis. The Social Security Act (SSA) was in keeping with his other "New Deal" programs, including the establishment of the Works Progress Administration and...

Three Portage County residents are accused of cashing Social Security checks of a relative who has been missing for 30 years and is presumed dead, and authorities are investigating to see whether her remains are buried on her wooded property. If Marie Jost is still alive she'd be 100 years old. But authorities now suspect she died in about 1982, and they're accusing her son, daughter and son-in-law of continuing to cash her government checks in her absence. Investigators believe Jost might be buried on her Amherst property. Sheriff's Capt. Dale O'Kray said Tuesday that cadaver dogs have hit upon...

A third of Florida's nearly 3 million retirees, 65 and older, now rely entirely on Social Security, according to an analysis by AARP. "Folks have spent down their assets," said Jeff Johnson, AARP interim director in Florida. More Floridians are likely to end up only on Social Security than retirees in the rest of the country: A quarter of U.S. retirees, 65 and older, have only their monthly checks as income, Johnson said. Many of the most strapped are Florida's oldest, he added. Florida seniors, 80 and older, are about three times as likely to depend

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: A question: If Barack Obama can use taxpayer money to invest in risky private sector investments like all of these fraudulent, phony, there-is-no-business-there green energy loans...? If Obama could do that, if he can use taxpayer money to invest in risky private sector investments that go belly up, shouldn't we be able to put our retirement money in a safer place than Washington? I personally don't mind risking my money on investments I trust. What I don't like is other people risking my own on investments only a fool would trust. Privatizing a portion of Social Security...

Social Security advocates are planning to protest Thursday at Social Security offices around the county. Thousands of American Federation of Government Employees Social Security employees, along with the Alliance for Retired Americans, the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, and the Strengthen Social Security Campaign are protesting recent proposals from Congress that would cut the Social Security Administration's operational budget.

The California man who lives part of his life as an “adult baby” and collects Social Security disability payments says the federal agency has cleared him of wrongdoing and will continue sending checks. Stanley Thornton Jr. now wants an apology from Sen. Tom Coburn, the Oklahoma Republican who called for the benefit review because the investigation disrupted the final months of life for his roommate Sandra Dias, who playacted as his mother, spoon-feeding him and helping him into his baby clothes until her death in July. “We recently reviewed the evidence in your Social Security disability claim and find that...

On September 12, the pioneering Rep. Thaddeus McCotter introduced trailblazing legislation providing workers the freedom to choose personal savings and investment accounts to finance half of their future Social Security benefits. This legislation would completely solve the future Social Security financing problem, without cutting benefits or raising taxes, as officially scored by the Chief Actuary of Social Security. Indeed, because standard, long-term market investment returns are so much higher than what Social Security even promises, workers with personal accounts will enjoy higher rather than lower benefits. Moreover, the legislation would result in the greatest reduction in government spending in world...

The Republican primary context has become a referendum on Social Security, with Texas Governor Rick Perry standing by his earlier statements denouncing the program as a Ponzi scheme, and Mitt Romney seeking to revive his presidential bid by defending Social Security. With Perry as the runaway front-runner, and only gaining in the polls, it looks like this will be a preview of the general election battle. So is Social Security a Ponzi scheme? Yes it is, in its own way, but that doesn't quite cover it. In reality, Social Security is much worse than a Ponzi scheme. The analogy to...

The Wall Street Journal editors took both Mitt Romney and Rick Perry to task for their stance on Social Security. They believe both GOP presidential contenders are wrong on the issue. Perry’s wrong for pointing out the obvious, but not taking it further, and Romney erred by repeating Democrat talking points – that the program can go on without significant reforms. The key point is that, unlike a Ponzi scheme, Social Security can be reformed and it will have to be if current workers are to receive any return on their current taxes. Everyone serious knows what the reform options...

My friend Jazz Shaw worries that Rick Perry’s argument that Social Security in its present form is a “Ponzi scheme” leaves him vulnerable in a general election. Rick Santelli gave it a workout on CNBC today against the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman, who ends up sputtering into ad hominems when he can’t counter Santelli’s arguments about the nature of a collective that can’t pay out on its promises — and Santelli responds in kind. The Daily Caller provides the transcript and Greg Hengler provides the clip: This gets to the larger point about using blunt language to describe an...

History Lesson on Your Social Security Card Just in case some of you young whippersnappers (& some older ones) didn't know this. It's easy to check out, if you don't believe it. Be sure and show it to your family And friends. They need a little history lesson on what's what and it doesn't matter Whether you are Democrat or Republican. Facts are Facts.

Social Security Admin. Averages 38 Life-Altering Mistakes Per DayMore Americans are being erroneously killed off by the Social Security Administration every day. Of the approximately 2.8 million death reports the Social Security Administration receives per year, about 14,000 -- or one in every 200 deaths -- are incorrectly entered into its Death Master File, which contains the Social Security numbers, names, birth dates, death dates, zip codes and last-known residences of more than 87 million deceased Americans. That averages out to 38 life-altering mistakes a day. While these errors occur online, in the depths of the administration's database, they have...

Prev Previous Article Editorials Print Comments 3 Debt crisis punctures Social Security myth By: Examiner Editorial | 07/14/11 9:00 PM "I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on Aug. 3,” President Barack Obama warned “CBS Evening News” viewers about Social Security on Tuesday night. “There may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it.” But how can that be? Haven’t Washington, D.C.’s professional politicians been telling us for decades that Social Security is in no danger of bankruptcy because of those trillions of dollars supposedly just sitting there in the Social Security Trust Fund? Why can’t...

President Obama on Tuesday said he cannot guarantee that retirees will receive their Social Security checks August 3 if Democrats and Republicans in Washington do not reach an agreement on reducing the deficit in the coming weeks. "I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven't resolved this issue. Because there may simply not be the money in the coffers to do it," Mr. Obama said in an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley, according to excerpts released by CBS News.

Obama's Social Security HoaxThe president will demagogue Social Security as his ticket to reelection. Everyone knows that the U.S. budget is being devoured by entitlements. Everyone also knows that of the Big Three — Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security — Social Security is the most solvable. Back-of-an-envelope solvable: Raise the retirement age, tweak the indexing formula (from wage inflation to price inflation), and means-test so that Warren Buffett’s check gets redirected to a senior in need. The relative ease of the fix is what makes the Obama administration’s Social Security strategy so shocking. The new line from the White House...

It should be obvious to every American that our entitlement programs – Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – now represent the lion’s share of the Federal budget, and are growing at an unsustainable rate. Unfortunately, no realistic solution to this fiscal disaster has ever been seriously evaluated by Congress. Worse, no effort has ever been made by our leaders to honestly inform Americans of the dire severity – and ominous consequences – of our current predicament. Even when President Bush attempted to confront the issue of Social Security – for which he was mercilessly demonized by Democrats and their media...

Americans have been used, strung along, ripped off, manipulated and frightened for decades by runaway gangs of power-mongering, deceptive politicians. I give you Social Security. As usual, it is the exact opposite of what we have been told. This classic Ponzi scheme is anti-social and insecure. President Franklin D. Roosevelt created Social Security 75 years ago. As with many other Fedzilla programs, Americans got suckered into believing Social Security was a healthy, wealthy and wise program. Social Security is bloated, broke and busted. FDR’s New Deal turned out to be the Rip-off Deal. There is an IOU for $2.5 trillion...

To understand the fraud at the heart of the Social Security Trust Fund, we start with a very simple fact: cash can only be spent once. There are two frauds at the very heart of the Social Security system, and I am going to describe and source them in detail. After spending a number of hours poring over public data from the Social Security Administration (SSA), The U.S. Treasury and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and additional hours searching the Web for other published analyses, I can state with some authority that there are no published analyses or accounts of...

Of course, the timing for the revelation on the day of the elections is a total coincidence. As per the revised tables, average incomes of top earners did not quintuple as had been released on October 15 to $519 million, but instead declined by 7.7% to $84 million.