Avoidance
By: Ed Henry

    Reform of Social Security is set back two years. Such is the wisdom of Congress after returning to work. Most congressmen feel that dealing with the third rail during an election year would be too detrimental and dangerous for them. Why take on something so controversial?

    Besides, it has recently been found that Social Security is not going to go broke for at least two years beyond what was originally predicted. So what's the hurry?

Translation: Congress wants to continue unabated theft of your money for the next two years, and probably forever. Things were getting uncomfortably close to exposing their criminal activities, so let's put it on a back burner, put it off forever or drop the issue. People forget. Besides, there's another war or two to think about now and this loot is needed.

 Childish Plans

   Clinton's "lock box" idea was stupid anyway. His plan was to take the $55 billion Social Security had in excess last year and the $20 billion contributed by other trust funds like Medicare during 1998 (the so called "surplus") and just stuff it in a mattress or cookie jar. The sort of thing your teenager or some senile oldster might do. Not working for anyone, not even gaining simple interest, this money would just sit there as we added to it until 2012 and it reached the phenomenal figure of $4.5 trillion (the amount they plan to steal from you).

    The republican opposition was proposing an equally ridiculous plan. Their idea was to allow part of future FICA taxes to be invested in the stock market through various alternatives. What was ridiculous about this plan was that everyone eventually saw that if private investment was such a good thing, if it provided a better return on investment, then why not invest all of the excess in that manner? This is where it started to become obvious to everyone that the government has been stealing your money for years.

    The only good thing about the lock-box plan was that there were not any phony bonds involved. It wouldn't put us deeper in debt or mean that we citizens would have to pay twice by buying back our own money as we must do with all trust fund excesses. At least, not from the "lock box" money. "People Bonds" (promissory Treasury notes) in the trust funds would however, represent an equal $4.5 trillion. Here's how that works.

 The Swindle

    Robert Rubin, chief pirate of the U.S. Treasury and a trustee of Social Security, pulled some shenanigans to get the stolen "surplus" from fiscal '98 to fiscal '99 while showing the books balanced out at zero.

    First, Rubin gave all of the trust funds "people (Treasury) bonds" to replace the cash stolen and then called that stolen cash a "surplus." It's the bogus bonds replacing this cash that will grow to $4.5 trillion by 2012, along with the real cash they replace were it put in Clinton's lock-box. Eventually you, your children and grandchildren will have to buy back these bogus bonds under the pay-it-again-Sam plan. That brings your total tab to $9 trillion. $4.5 trillion up until 2012, and $4.5 trillion from that point forward in order to redeem these bonds. Isn't that nice?

    What he did then was pretend to pay down the national debt. In reality, he actually did pay down the debt by $75 billion towards the end of fiscal '98 making certain that the newsfakers and presstitutes got the message. As soon as he was into a new fiscal year, just days later, the Treasury began selling extra bonds on the open market. More bonds than were needed to simply maintain the debt level; i.e., replace maturing bonds. $75 billion worth of new bonds were sold on the open market. Now the "surplus" is in the new fiscal year and everyone can argue about what to do with it.

    Proof: As of March 31st, 1999, exactly 6 months into the new fiscal year, the Bureau of Public Debt to-the-penny reported the national debt at $5,651,615,289,284.87 ($5.651 trillion). With only half of the fiscal year gone by, that's already $12 billion more than the total debt increase for all of fiscal 1998. Crafty as they are, the same thing will be done again this year. We'll have another "pay-down" and another "surplus" to carry over. But the increase in the national debt will be well over $200 billion. This trick only works once, then it catches up with you. Think Rubin can come up with another and different trick?

 Where It Goes

    And what use is being made of this phony surplus? Well, $6 billion was already taken from the lock box to bail out the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - independent bankers who screwed up on loans to unreliable third-world nations. Shades of Neil Bush and other S&Ls from the eighties. You don't hear much about brother Neil nowadays do you?

    Another $7 to $13 billion is estimated to get us through the war in Kosovo. Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC), one of the only on-track congressmen says: "we're paying for the war in Kosovo with Social Security money."

    Don't you think that there's something perverse about conducting a war with your stolen retirement funds?

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