Teapublicans are out to steal YOUR retirement insurance premiums.

Let’s call some spades, here, OK? Social Security is INSURANCE for which we are forced to pay premiums. Some of us have paid for this insurance for decades and have the right to expect that the seller will deliver the product we had no choice but to purchase. Sounds simple, yes? We pay, we should get what we pay for, like any other insurance (car, home, life) product.

But not according to “Republicans”: they are out to breach our contract and steal our money:

As one of its first orders of business upon convening Tuesday, the Republican House of Representatives approved a rule that will seriously undermine efforts to keep all of Social Security solvent.

The rule hampers an otherwise routine reallocation of Social Security payroll tax income from the old-age program to the disability program. Such a reallocation, in either direction, has taken place 11 times since 1968, according to Kathy Ruffing of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The most cynical aspect of this attack is that it comes from some lawmakers who were helped by Social Security in their own lives. The roster includes Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who received Social Security benefits during his college years, after his father’s untimely death, and now thinks that the nation can’t afford to keep paying them as currently scheduled.

Another is Rep. Tom Reed (R-N.Y.), the sponsor of the House rules change, whose father died when he was 2 and then was raised by a single mother on Social Security and veterans benefits. Now he talks about Social Security going “bankrupt,” which is flatly incorrect, and promotes a measure aimed at cutting benefits for all. This is known as climbing the ladder and pulling it up behind you.

Got it, folks? The Teapubbies are doing exactly what they said they would do if elected. They are out to wreck Social Security, pocket our premiums, and throw anyone who is retired or disabled onto the streets instead of giving you the insurance benefits you paid for.

F*** those people. And if you voted for a “Republican”, f*** you too.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Yes, Government Can Create Jobs. And it Should

Mr. Blunt and Cranky will drive to work today on roads built by government-funded workers. When there, he will use the Internet, developed partly by the government. He will use water fountains that are supplied by government-funded water systems.

He will be protected by government workers from the military and police and fire departments. On and on the list goes. Taxpayer money providing jobs: that is a pretty tangible return on investment (ROI).

Government-created jobs built much of the infrastructure that we use each day: because there is not a lot of money to be made, private businesses rarely take on such projects.

Today, that infrastructure is crumbling, because much of Congress is delusional enough to think that rational business interests will lose their shirts by taking on such undertakings. They will not. No ethical private-sector organization can or should do so.

While the backbone of our economy is quickly breaking down, our legislators refuse to live in the real world; the world outside of their comfy cocoons, in which real people use the real “products” provided by those government jobs that really do exist.

During the Great Depression, our leaders were wise enough to see that paying people to build things was preferable to paying them to look for jobs in the private sector; especially when there were no effing jobs to be found there.

It is time to give the unemployed the opportunity to work again: to not only provide honest value for the taxpayer’s hard-earned (which the so-called “pro-business types should endorse), but also to provide dignity to those who would be working for their money and providing us all with a better life and the increased opportunities that come from those jobs.

The jobs that modern “Republicans” pretend don’t exist.

Mr. B & C