Ten years ago subscribers would have read on this page "What’s Going to Happen to Your Social Security?". It told you that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, Social Security will be short of funds starting in 2033 — unable then to pay full benefits if Congress failed to fix the shortfall.

In the ten years since, Congress has done nothing. This looming catastrophe — 40% of seniors depend on Social Security as their only source of income — and Congress does nothing.

And so, just six years from now, the Social Security trust fund will run out of money by 2032, “resulting in benefit cuts of 22.5% in 2033”, says the CBO.

For many decades, the Social Security Administration (SSA) took in more from payroll taxes than it paid out as benefits to seniors and those with disabilities. The difference was loaned in a constant stream to the government in exchange for IOUs with the growing deposits referred to as a trust fund. As the bulge of the post-World War II baby boomer generation began to retire, that surplus dried up. Beginning in 2021, benefit outlays began to exceed tax receipts and the SSA had to begin drawing down the difference, calling in the IOUs from the government trust fund to cover the gap. The trust fund will be completely drained at some point in 2032 leaving only the income of payroll taxes beginning the following year, and that income will be 22.5% shy of what will be needed to pay out as benefits to retirees. What to do?

There is no end to the ideas for adjustments that would put Social Security's finances back on firm footing. Trouble is, it is now so late that none of them have enough time to pull… Read More »

Lacking any knowledge of climate science, President Trump nevertheless persists in calling global warming a “hoax”, a “scam”, a “con job” advanced by climate scientists who are “stupid people”. Fittingly, on taking office again, he immediately set about cancelling all climate initiatives, hyping oil and gas with his infantile "drill, baby, drill" mantra, hobbling wind and solar, and slashing regulations.

On his first day he set in motion the yearlong process that removes the United States from the Paris Agreement, the treaty to combat climate change. Adopted by 195 parties at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris in December 2015, the U.S. is the only country to withdraw, with the White House calling it “restoring American sovereignty” in keeping with "America First". It is just one of a long list of United Nations organizations that he simultaneously, on his own, chose to cancel by executive order that day.

Halo Mustafa Al Askari, the environmental minister of the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, threatened by rising oceans caused by climate change, spoke directly:

”Tragically, the world’s [second] largest emitter of greenhouse gases has withdrawn...Mr. President, this is a shameful disregard for the rest of the world”.

Lee Zeldin, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is an ardent deregulator. Just weeks ago he celebrated what he called “the single largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States”. His agency has worked to unravel the over 200-pages of peer-reviewed evidence that led to the 5-to-4 Supreme Court Massachusetts v. EPA decision in 2007 that agreed carbon dioxide is a pollutant that, under the Nixon-era Clean Air Act, must therefore be regulated as a… Read More »

Donald Trump fears impeachment should Democrats take majority control of the House of Representatives this November. There are a few Republican grumbles about his presidency but nowhere enough for the Senate to then convict and remove him from office. Eight of them would have to join all the Democrats to reach the needed 67% super majority.

Jim Vondruska, New York Times.jpg


Nevertheless, it seems that Mr. Trump is troubled by a third impeachment damaging his reputation. So, he who persistently but falsely calls elections "rigged" and ridden with "horrible… Read More »