{"id":190329,"date":"2009-12-09T22:06:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-10T03:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/12\/09\/its-a-death-trap-its-a-suicide-rap-2\/"},"modified":"2009-12-09T22:06:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-10T03:06:00","slug":"its-a-death-trap-its-a-suicide-rap-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/12\/09\/its-a-death-trap-its-a-suicide-rap-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Its a Death Trap, It&#8217;s a Suicide Rap*"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ah, yes, the &#8220;centrists&#8221; in the Senate.  They are what Obi Wan Kenobi was speaking of when he said, &#8220;Never will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.&#8221;<sup>\u2021<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>Their latest &#8220;gift&#8221; to the rest of us?  They are <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2009\/12\/09\/news\/economy\/fiscal_commission\/index.htm\">proposing a commission in order to create a back door way to defund Social Security and Medicare<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In this case, it&#8217;s Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, (DINO-ND) along with Senatior Judd Gregg (R-NH):<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>The commission&#8217;s main goal would be to figure out what the country needs to do to get its budget back on a more balanced track.<\/p>\n<p>Specifically, the commission would suggest ways to curb spending growth &#8212; especially in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security &#8212; and to boost tax revenue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>There is a simple solution:  You just raise the maximum income taken for social security, and let it cover <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">everything<\/span> that is remuneration, and it&#8217;s solvent forever.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, it&#8217;s solvent enough that it can <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">fix the medicare funding issue too<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Of note is how this committee is structured, with 18 members, 8 of each party appointed by Congress, and 2 appointed by the White House, and that it would require that at least 14 of the 18 members approve any report, which would be submitted to Congress for an up or down vote.<\/p>\n<p>So, for any tax increase, you would need <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">at least \u00bd of the Republicans to approve<\/span>, and you won&#8217;t get one.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a Trojan horse, and should be left outside the gates.<\/p>\n<p>It fills the gap, and then some, while<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">Apologies to the Boss.  It&#8217;s a line from <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">Born to Run<\/span><\/span><sup>\u2020<\/sup><br \/><sup>\u2020<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">That&#8217;s Bruce Springsteen to those of you who are musically illiterate.<\/span><br \/><sup>\u2021<\/sup><span style=\"font-style: italic;font-size:78%;\" ><span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">Star Wars<\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">, you remember that? It was a minor film released in 1977 by the director of <\/span><span style=\"font-style: italic;font-size:78%;\" >THX-1138<\/span><span style=\"font-size:78%;\">.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ah, yes, the &#8220;centrists&#8221; in the Senate. They are what Obi Wan Kenobi was speaking of when he said, &#8220;Never will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.&#8221;\u2021 Their latest &#8220;gift&#8221; to the rest of us? They are proposing a commission in order to create a back door way to defund Social &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1038,998,1051,1020,983],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-budget","category-congress","category-hypocrisy","category-legislation","category-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190329"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=190329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190329\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}