Wednesday - March 02, 2005

Social Security

omehow this beast keeps rearing its ugly head with rhetoric flying on both sides. 

In the interests of trying to present both sides of the issue I have some stuff for you to look at.

First off, we start with Vox Day’s piece on WND. Having read it I come away shaking my head wondering at his agenda with his view.  He spends a lot of time going into the machinations of balancing the different averages but I saw little that would lend it self to the argument that a person should not invest in the stock market (yet somehow I feel that’s the point he is trying to make.)

Could be I read too much into it since Vox is WAY more intelligent than I am so maybe I missed it?

I do know he posted to his blog about market re-balancings and the advantages (albeit yet proven) of investing in the stocks kicked out of the major averages (DOW, S&P, NASDAQ, etc.) Yet this seems like a tie in to that which really has no bearing on the SS argument.

Ahhhhh, maybe he’s advocating a “stock only” portfolio for SS rather than an index portfolio.

Someone more well versed than me will have to break the code on this one.

Not to be left out is a new contest sponsored by MoveOn.Org

What’s it about?  They are:

joining forces with actor John Cusack, cartoonist Aaron McGruder, and liberal activists Al Franken and Arianna Huffington to promote the contest, called “Bush in 30 Years: A Flash Contest to Stop the Republican Social Security Scam.”

Damn!  Even Pat Boone is chining in on this except now he’s channeling Will Rogers.

For a humorous approach to the SS mess, read Pat’s article.

OK, maybe this one does not advocate one position or the other but it is an excellent example of the media hypocrisy evident in this debate.  Particularly startling is how the NY Times takes issue with the USA Next group tenuously tied to the Republican party on this debate but absolutely disregards those leftist groups are tightly tied to the Democratic party.

In addition you have Air America going after them, too.  Yet they conveniently forget a few things which Michael Tremoglie writes about in this article.

Stuff like:

Democracy for America was founded by current DNC Chairman Howard Dean.

Whereas Dean is no longer there, his brother Jim, is.  (No relation to Jimmy Dean, I am sure!!)

Funny how Air America does not seem to think there might be collusion going on here, eh?

Democracy for America actively opposes Social Security reform. Democracy for America’s lists a “Blog for America.”

or

Democracy for America received $250,000 from George Soros

or

Democracy for America received $100,000 from the leftist Service Employees International Union (SEIU)

or

that Air America was financed by Democratic National Committee advisor Mark Walsh.

Ooops, missed all those one, too, eh, AA?

But tenous at best ties by USA Next top the Republican party is the RAGE, the NEWS!! the SCANDAL!!!!

Then again, if we look at the federal government’s Thrift Savings Plan we’d see that it beats the pants off Social Security.  And it is simple because it offers five investment portfolios:

G Fund: This is, in effect, an intermediate-term government bond fund. It invests in specially issued Treasury securities. “The G Fund rate formula is the same as that used to calculate the interest rate for investments of the Social Security Trust Fund,” notes Tom Trabucco, the thrift plan’s spokesman. The fund is managed by the plan itself.

F Fund: This is an intermediate-term high-quality bond fund that tracks the Lehman Aggregate Bond Index. Like all of the portfolios except G Fund, it is an index fund that is managed by Barclays Global Investors, the world’s largest indexing firm.

C Fund: This fund is indexed to the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index ($INX) of large-capitalization stocks.

S Fund: This portfolio is indexed to the Wilshire 4500 Index of small and mid-cap companies.

I Fund: This fund is indexed to Morgan Stanley’s Europe, Australasia, Far East, or EAFE, Index of large-company foreign stocks.

Sounds amazingly like what I’ve been advocating, right?  Plus it has extraordinarily low overhead by employing less than 100 people.

For numbers, etc.  go here.

Lastly, I got this from Allan a few days ago adn even went to the site mentioned.  It is an effort by Democraps to PROVE how bad privatization would be.  Yet they give no assumptions, premises, or amounts used (total privatization?; 4 percentage points? individual half of contribution?)

The info comes from The Political Junkie Handbook

Pundits have written much about President Bush’s Social Security Privatization Proposal.  The Democrats’ social security calculator gives the user a general idea of how they would fare under Bush’s plan.  Unfortunately, there is little information about the calculator.  What factors did they consider?  Benefits under the Bush plan are a function of time, return on investment and age of retirement.  None of their assumptions are listed.  I believe that they chose a very low ROI, probably around 2%, to arrive at their conclusion that retirees will find that their benefits will be cut under privatization.

I tested two rates of return on investment: 4.23% (average annual return over last 10 yrs. in an international stock index fund) and 6.95% ( average annual return over last 10 yrs in money market index funds) .  I compared returns from the perspective of current age (50, 40, 30 and 20 years of
age) and income ( $30,000, $60,000 and $90,000).

The results indicated that some people gain and others lose at a 4.23% return and everyone enjoys substantial gains with a 6.95% return.  I estimated that everyone will break even or enjoy small and moderate gains from the existing Social Security benefits schedule with approximately a 5% return.  This should not be too difficult to achieve since the S&P 500 annually returned over 10% in each decade during the last 70 years.

Naturally not every group experienced the same returns.  Generally, the young and affluent experienced comparatively greater returns.

(Here) is a chart summarizing my findings.

Cordially,

Michael Crane

Flail away, folks!  Let’s hear it!

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 03/02/2005 at 06:49 AM   
Filed Under: • Social-Security •  
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Continuing Saga At The UN

s more and more evidence piles up about abuses of women and children at the hands of UN peacekeepers, some changes are being proposed to how the accused are prosecuted. Read it here.

Meanwhile, the UN Secretary General, Koffing Anus, continues to insist that merely asking them to stop it will suffice.

But as far as Congressman Smith from NJ is concerned, that’s not enough.  He is proposing a bill that would halt US funding of any peace keeping effort unless all participating nations have codes of conduct to stop these abuses. (you may need to log in to read it:  use (wilma@thezone.org) as the logon and (bob6bob) as password.

Speaking of the UN, while we are all embroiled in Oscars, Iraq, Koffing Anus’ minions raping and pillaging, social security, etc. it looks like a treaty will soon be passed that is NOT in the interests of the US but appears to be supported by President Bush.

The Law Of the Sea Treaty, rejected by President Reagan has gained approval in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

It is still not law but we must work at getting 34 senators to vote it down or it WILL go into effect.

This is what it will do:

A new transnational tribunal, the International Seabed Authority, would take jurisdiction over 70 percent of the planet - all of the oceans’ resources, living and non-living - as “the common heritage of all mankind.” Companies seeking to mine or drill the ocean floor would have to pay a fee and be licensed by ISA, which would set production quotas and rake off part of the profits for redistribution.

If you thought oil-for-food was a scandal, wait till this becomes law.

Write your senators today. PLEASE!

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 03/02/2005 at 06:46 AM   
Filed Under: • United-Nations •  
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Couldn’t Hold Off Any Longer

I waited a day to post about this because I wanted to hear more about it but what really frosted my jaws was to hear that our Supreme Court Justices are using International law upon which to base decisions.

Read more here.

What the hell is wrong with these bastards?  International law?  Since when do we toss our own Constitution aside and go looking for precedent outside the country?  Worse yet, according to Rush Limbaugh, the “international aspect” considered by the judges aren’t even laws.  They are just un-ratified treaties!!!

Not only that, what message are we sending criminals?  That if they need to whack someone just use a gang banging kid knowing he’ll never fry for the crime?  How long before our headlines are full of underage murders because the punks know they’ll be taken care of for life and never have to worry about the chair?

For a further twist on the applicability of international law upon our system and how it may affect our sovereignty, read this WSJ piece.

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 03/02/2005 at 06:44 AM   
Filed Under: • Democrats-Liberals-Moonbat Leftists • Judges-Courts-Lawyers •  
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What’s Wrong With Education?

ry this on for size.  Teachers in California (natch!) are pissed off at not having gotten raises so they quit doing a lot of what they used to do.  I can understand of the extra-curricular stuff (but hell they got themselves in THAT mess by voluntarily doing those things anyway!)

But to stop handing out homework and deprive kids of a good education is tantamount to doing what those ATC assholes when Reagan was in office---and for which they all got summarily fired.

I wonder if Governor AH-Nold will look at firing these asswipes.

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 03/02/2005 at 06:41 AM   
Filed Under: • Education •  
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You Gotta Love It

erves them socialist bastard Krauts right.

“5.216 million people, or 12.6% of the working-age population, is the highest jobless rate in Europe’s biggest economy since the 1930s.”

You’d think those bastards would cut income tax rates, stop funding their social spending programs at the ridiculous levels they currently do, and demand their people get jobs.

But, noooooooooooo, keep them on the bureaucratic tit and watch your government collapse.

Fuck ‘em!  The sooner it happens the sooner we can go in there and buy the country for pennies on the dollar.  Then use it as a weapons testing area.  Or a place for our tank battalions to practice on.  Or a place to send all our illegal immigrants.

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 03/02/2005 at 06:38 AM   
Filed Under: • EUro-peons •  
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What Else Do You Expect From The French?

A French journalist captured by terrorists in Iraq was on TV crying for his life:

“I am French. I am a journalist with Liberation. Please help me. My health is very bad. I’m very bad psychologically also”

Hey, tough shit, asshole.  You knew the risks when you went in there.  Just surrender to the situation.  After all, it’s what you Fwenchy-Fwench do best---surrender!

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 03/02/2005 at 06:37 AM   
Filed Under: • EUro-peons •  
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It Hardly Gets Better Than This

ou may recall that dumbass broad who started the Million Mom March bullshit, right?  Yeah, that’s right!  The one who was so against guns she rallied a bunch of cry baby victim-hood loving asswipes to walk around D.C.

Well, she’s been arrested on gun charges! And drug charges!  (check out her nickname!)

BWAH HA HA HA.

Dumb bitch. 

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 03/02/2005 at 06:36 AM   
Filed Under: •   
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The Invisible Man…..A Reality?

magine how much fun you could have at a party with this technology if it could work at the human level?

But hold on to your horses there, slick.  Not so fast.  Not yet anyway.

But for objects of smaller size there are still many uses.

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 03/02/2005 at 06:20 AM   
Filed Under: • Science-Technology •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

I Can Go For This

rizona takes the lead again in the fight against illegal immigrants.

HOORAY!!

Coming next year will be a proposal permitting Americans to sue companies that hire illegal immigrants.

Now THAT’S great news.

Let’s watch this and get our congress-critters to support it.

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 03/02/2005 at 06:19 AM   
Filed Under: • Illegal-Aliens and Immigration •  
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The Natives Are Restless

ative Fijians are pissed off about Mel Gibson buying one of their islands.

How pissed off are they?

Pissed off enough to go hire an attorney to stop the sale (even though a judge said it is legal) citing “affirmative action they claim that back in the 1800s the island was sold for 2000 coconuts and they claim to have been dispossessed.

Now, I am no historian but back then NO FUCKING FIJIAN owned ANY property.  It all belonged to Chiefs who could do what they wanted.

So some greedy fuck of a chief sold it, the deal was legalized and that’s that.

But apparently the current-day natives, borrowing a page from US Black Victi-Crat leaders, race baiters are demanding some sort of reparations by getting declared the original deal be null and void.  That way the island reverts to them.

If we use that as an argument then the whole world needs to be given back to the methane gasses and sulphur gasses on this planet.

Posted by Ranting Right Wing Howler     on 03/02/2005 at 06:15 AM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
• Comments (2) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

E.T. Needs Penis Enlargement?

Not satisfied with spamming every freaking e-mail box in the entire world, now advertisers can send their crap into deep space.

E.T. responds by creating large spam filter and bulk folder on moon.

And you wonder why other lifeforms out there are ignoring us ....?

Posted by The Skipper     on 03/02/2005 at 03:18 AM   
Filed Under: • Stoopid-People •  
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Kangadoo

I shit you not.

 
Tie me kangaroo down sport,
tie me kangaroo down.
Tie me kangaroo down sport,
tie me kangaroo down.
-- Rolf Harris (1960)

Posted by The Skipper     on 03/02/2005 at 02:55 AM   
Filed Under: • Outrageous •  
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   Tuesday - March 01, 2005

Shot Of The Day

Posted by The Skipper     on 03/01/2005 at 05:19 PM   
Filed Under: • Miscellaneous •  
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More Smileys

Blog Update: I just added three new smileys that I found .... in case you want to give someone the   or you just need to mellow out and smoke a   or tend to your garden and grow some .

If any of you find any good smileys (emoticons) out there, send them to me. All smileys must be 19 x 19 pixels.

Posted by The Skipper     on 03/01/2005 at 04:19 PM   
Filed Under: • Humor •  
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