Krugman - Attacking Social Security - NYTimes.com

Krugman again...sorry, he's good...
td

"Social Security turned 75 last week. It should have been a joyous occasion, a time to celebrate a program that has brought dignity and decency to the lives of older Americans.
>snip...
Social Security’s attackers claim that they’re concerned about the program’s financial future. But their math doesn’t add up, and their hostility isn’t really about dollars and cents. Instead, it’s about ideology and posturing. And underneath it all is ignorance of or indifference to the realities of life for many Americans.
>snip...
Social Security has been running surpluses for the last quarter-century, banking those surpluses in a special account, the so-called trust fund. The program won’t have to turn to Congress for help or cut benefits until or unless the trust fund is exhausted, which the program’s actuaries don’t expect to happen until 2037 — and there’s a significant chance, according to their estimates, that that day will never come.
>snip...
What’s really going on here? Conservatives hate Social Security for ideological reasons: its success undermines their claim that government is always the problem, never the solution. But they receive crucial support from Washington insiders, for whom a declared willingness to cut Social Security has long served as a badge of fiscal seriousness, never mind the arithmetic."

Read the whole article here:
Op-Ed Columnist - Attacking Social Security - NYTimes.com:

Op-Ed Contributor - How to prepare for the next major sun blast. - NYTimes.com

Can we PLEASE buy the insurance...
or we may end up as hippie back-to-the-lander's, and incur a large cost getting back on grid afterward...
hmm...maybe that's a good thing...it might drive more individual/local solar installations... ;^) td

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Op-Ed Contributor - How to prepare for the next major sun blast. - NYTimes.com

Without aggressive preparation, we run the risk of a disaster magnitudes greater than Hurricane Katrina. Little or no electricity means little or no telecommunications, refrigeration, clean water or fuel. Basic law enforcement and national security could be compromised.

Fortunately, there are several defenses against solar storms. The most important are grid-level surge suppressors, which are essentially giant versions of the devices we use at home to protect computers. There are some 5,000 vulnerable transformers in North America; at $50,000 for each suppressor, we could protect the grid for about $250 million.

Earlier this year the House of Representatives passed a bill that would allow the White House to require utilities to put grid-protection measures in place, then recoup the costs from customers. Unfortunately, the companion bill in the Senate contains no such provision.

It’s not a lost cause, though; lawmakers can still insert the grid-protection language during conference. If they don’t, there could be trouble soon: the next period of heavy solar activity will be in late 2012. Having gone unprepared for one recent natural disaster, we would make a grave mistake not to get ready for the next.

Lawrence E. Joseph is the author of “Aftermath: A Guide to Preparing for and Surviving Apocalypse 2012.
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Six Months to Go Until The Largest Tax Hikes in History

Six Months to Go Until The Largest Tax Hikes in History:

"In just six months, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect. They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2011:"

I got this fwd from an old friend, it's getting wide circulation on the right, and I just had to spend some time collecting some citations debunking it. Click the link to read it, I'm not posting it here. - td

In this undocumented blog post first published by accountant Ryan Ellis on Wednesday, July 7, 2010 at http://atr.org/six-months-untilbr-largest-tax-hikes-a5171 there are several plain mistakes, many deliberately misleading statements, and no citations or support at all. Ellis is a conservative blogger/tax accountant.

One is the claim that

>Starting in 2011,

>(next year folks), your W-2 tax form sent by your employer will be increased to

>show the

>value of whatever health insurance you are given by the company.

You will now be

>required to pay taxes on a large sum of money that you have never seen.

Nah, they'll list it, but it is NOT taxable,

Factcheck.com has a direct rebuttal:

http://www.factcheck.org/...

Notice the wording- "2/3's of profits will be taxed". Notice it doesn't say 2/3's of small business owners wil be taxed.

http://pewsocialtrends.org/...

According to the Current Population Survey data, the median annual personal income of self-employed workers in 2008 was $35,357, while the median for wage and salaried workers is $35,000.

Similarly, the Pew Research survey asked respondents for their overall family incomes -- a total that includes the earnings of spouses -- and found that the median family incomes of the self-employed and other workers are identical: $62,500.

The self employed are not making significantly more than other people. Likewise only a few of them would be affected by the >$250k tax hike.

and Politifact has a list evaluating various other statements about taxes on both sides of the fence

http://www.politifact.com/...

Here's one pertinent to this post that is plainly false:

"Should Democrats get their way, every income tax bracket will increase on Jan. 1, 2011. Every single one." Mike Pence

If the tax cuts were to expire with no Congressional intervention, the pre-2001 tax brackets would spring back to life. Here's how the tax brackets would look on a before-and-after basis for married couples filing jointly based on their incomes. For simplicity, we're ignoring modest adjustments for inflation. Tax brackets for other categories such as individual filers broadly follow the same pattern.

• Up to $16,750: Rises from 10 percent to 15 percent

• From $16,751 to $58,200: Stays same at 15 percent, but entire bracket pays 5 percent additional on the first $16,750

• From $58,201 to $68,000: Rises from 15 percent to 28 percent

• From $68,001 to $137,300: Rises from 25 percent to 28 percent

• From $137,301 to $209,250: Rises from 28 percent to 31 percent

• From $209,251 to $373,650: Rises from 33 percent to 36 percent

• $373,651 and up: Rises from 35 percent to 39.6 percent

So on this point, Pence is correct, assuming Congress does nothing.

• Do Democrats want every tax bracket to rise, as Pence suggests? In a word, no.

For many months, Democratic officials have consistently said that they intend to let only the tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals lapse. The cutoff they usually suggest is $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for married couples filing jointly.

Here's a quick pair of visuals in an article by Ezra Kline at the Washington Post, but he pulls the charts from the Wall Street Journal...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/30/AR2010073002671.html

This chart from the Wall Street Journal demonstrates that not only do low-, middle- and even upper-middle-class people not suffer under President Obama's proposed tax changes, they actually benefit relative to if the Bush tax cuts were extended in full:

Unfortunately, this does not include the effect of letting the Bush tax cuts expire in their entirety, which CBO projections show would deal with much of the deficit problem in the medium to long term. Luckily, the Tax Foundation has crunched those numbers as well. Here's the WSJ graph modified to include the effect of letting the tax cuts expire as planned. S = single, M = married, *E indicates the number of earners in the household, and *C indicates the number of children:

The pattern here is fairly simple.Letting all the tax cuts expire produces the highest tax burden of the three for every group except the very rich, who pay the most under Obama's plan. Below the $300,000-a-year group, the lowest burden comes from the Obama tax proposals, while above that group it comes from extending the Bush tax cuts. Extending the cuts in their entirety, then, would primarily benefit high earners, while the Obama plan both raises rates on very high earners, relative to the status quo, and reduces the burden of low- and middle-income taxpayers. (my bold - td)