Losman-McGahee-Evans

Funniest - Post - Ever.

Yeah. I hated Jim Kelly too. LOL

We've got to adress that position via FA because this draft is really thin at TE. If it was up to me I'd make a big push for TE and OG via free agency and CB with our 1st pick in the draft.

90% of these names listed are free agents although I added a couple of "odd man out" QB's like Kittner. I'm thinking TB goes with Griese over Johnson as the back up to Simms but I could be worng.

I think LJ Shelton is an upgrade at LT and LG Mike Wahle would round out a pretty solid O-line. I'd also hope for TE Marcus Pollard to be released but I'd be happy with Freddie Jones. I just don't know how successful we'll be trying to upgrade those positions via the draft. I'd try to upgrade the secondary and or if there isn't much there at CB with our 2nd round pick I'd reach and take Nugent in the 2nd round. With a 2nd year QB I just don't think we can have too many ways to lose a game so maybe picking Nugent is that big of a reach when you think about it.

I think Pollard or Freddie jones would be a great fit in this offense and it would allow us not to reach in the draft to fill that spot.

Over Hassleback?

Amen to that. As a Republican it's been pretty refreshing to not hear a single Democrat who isn't overjoyed by what's going on there. I'm glad that both parties are overjoyed by the fact that Democracy has begun in Iraq.

The argument has been consistent. There is no crisis and lying and saying there is one doesn't help my party. What he's saying and I'm saying is THERE IS NO CRISIS. How about fact.org (Run by a right-wing think tank so its not like there not biased toward the Republican party) : Does Social Security Really Face an $11 Trillion Deficit? Bush and Cheney say yes. But actuaries say the figure is "likely to mislead" the public on the system's true financial state. January 21, 2005 Modified: January 21, 2005 eMail to a friend Printer Friendly Version Summary President Bush and Vice President Cheney have told audiences that Social Security faces an $11 trillion shortfall if nothing is done to fix the current system. But they fail to mention that this is over the course of the “infinite future." Over the next 75 years -- still practically a lifetime -- the shortfall is projected to be $3.7 trillion. The "infinite" projection is one that the American Academy of Actuaries says is likely to mislead the public into thinking the system "is in far worse financial condition than is actually indicated," and therefore should not be used to explain the long-term outlook. Analysis In a roundtable conversation on January 11, the president said the Social Security system “is going to be short the difference between obligations and money coming in, by about $11 trillion, unless we act.” President Bush Remarks at Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium, January 11, 2005 Bush: Now, I readily concede some would say, well, it's not bankrupt yet; why don't we wait until it's bankrupt? The problem with that notion is that the longer you wait, the more difficult it is to fix. You realize that this system of ours is going to be short the difference between obligations and money coming in, by about $11 trillion, unless we act. And that's an issue. That's trillion with a "T." Vice President Cheney echoed this claim in a January 13 speech at Catholic University when he said, “Again, the projected shortfall in Social Security exceeds $10 trillion.” Both are correct -- but fail to mention that nearly two-thirds of that colossal bill doesn't come due until after the year 2078. The Trustees Report The projection comes from the 2004 Social Security Trustees report which estimates that the system’s unfunded obligations are $10.4 trillion over the course of what they call the "infinite horizon." Historically, the infinite-horizon projection has not been included in the annual report, and was only added in 2003. Previously the Trustees had used only a 75-year projection to estimate the system’s long-term deficits, roughly the length of a human lifetime. (Average life expectancy at birth has now increased to just over 77 years, up from just under 75 years as recently as the 1980's, according to the National Center for Health Statistics .) The Social Security Trustees' 2004 projection shows a $3.7 trillion shortfall over this 75-year period. The Trustees reasoned that the 75-year window should be extended to the infinite future to give policymakers a better idea of the changes necessary to keep the system sustainable indefinitely -- especially beyond 2078 when they said Social Security’s deficit will be increasing even faster than during the next 75 years. Vice President Cheney Remarks at Catholic University, January 13, 2005 Cheney: Another argument against Social Security reform with voluntary personal accounts is that the so-called transition costs would be too high. Yet focusing merely on transition costs is to overlook the greater cost of doing nothing. Again, the projected shortfall in Social Security exceeds $10 trillion; that figure is nearly twice the combined wages and salaries of every single working American last year. There will be no -- there will be costs no matter what we decide. A technical panel set up to advise the Social Security Administration later said that infinite-horizon model is useful but “it is difficult to understand." The panel recommended that the infinite-horizon calculations be expressed more prominently as a percentage of the taxable payroll rather than the actual dollar amount. Referring to the 2003 trustees report, the panel said: Technical Panel on Assumptions and Methods: The Report also briefly mentions the infinite horizon actuarial deficit of 3.8 percent. This figure is more informative that the dollar value of the infinite horizon unfunded obligations, and should be presented more prominently…. While the…information is useful, it is difficult to understand. The $10.5 trillion is a large figure, but it needs to be seen in the context of the present value of taxable payroll over the infinite horizon, which is on the order of $275 trillion. Later, in the 2004 report issued last March, the Trustees updated those figures to a $10.4 trillion deficit and a $295.5 trillion taxable payroll. Social Security Deficit and Payroll Taxes The percent of taxable payroll is the portion of an employee’s payroll tax that goes toward Social Security and is currently set at the rate of 12.4 percent, half of which is paid by the employer and the other half by employee. Over 75 years, the Trustees estimate the actuarial deficit is 1.8 percent of taxable payroll. This means that for the system to be completely solvent over the next 75 years, without adjusting benefits, payroll taxes would have to go up to 14.2 percent immediately. And to be solvent for the "infinite future," the $10.4 trillion shortfall equals 3.5 percent of taxable payroll, or a tax increase to15.9 percent of wages. The Infinite Horizon – Is it useful? Contrary to the technical panel’s endorsement, the American Academy of Actuaries, a nonpartisan organization that sets standards of practice for actuaries in the US , disputes the value of the infinite horizon projection. In fact, they said it probably would mislead anyone lacking technical expertise and that it provides “little if any useful information” about the system’s long-term finances. In a December 2003 letter to the Social Security Advisory Board, the Academy wrote: American Academy of Actuaries: …The new measures of the unfunded obligations included in the 2003 report provide little if any useful information about the program’s long-range finances and indeed are likely to mislead anyone lacking technical expertise in the demographic, economic, and actuarial aspects of the program’s finances into believing that the program is in far worse financial condition than is actually indicated. The Academy states that there is already much uncertainty using 75-year projections, and that extending estimates into the infinite future only increases that uncertainty, producing results that "are of limited value to policymakers.” They point out that changes which took place over the last 75 years were unforeseeable to actuaries in 1928, such as the Great Depression or the baby boom, and therefore have no reason to doubt that unforeseeable changes will not occur in the future. Demographic and economic assumptions have always been a controversial issue among demographers predicting the long-term sustainability of Social Security. Significant advances in life expectancy have taken place over the last century, which exert more pressure on the system's finances as people live longer lives. Whether future mortality rates will continue to slow or increase with medical technology, the Academy of Actuaries argues that the inconsistencies which arise from such long-range assumptions are "inevitable" when making projections over the course of infinity. For this reason, they conclude that the infinite-horizon measurement is a “detriment” to the Trustees Report. They write: American Academy of Actuaries: Thus, we believe that including these values in the Trustees Report is unnecessary and is, on balance, a detriment to the Trustees’ charge to provide a meaningful and balanced presentation of the financial status of the program. One final note: The Trustees and actuaries give the $10.4-trillion figure and others what is called "present value," a theoretical lump-sum figure that takes into account expected future inflation and interest rates. Otherwise, any continuing deficit projected into the infinite future would automatically become an infinitely large sum. Sources Table IV.B7.--Unfunded OASDI Obligations for 1935 (Program Inception) Through the Infinite Horizon, "THE 2004 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE FEDERAL OLD-AGE AND SURVIVORS INSURANCE AND DISABILITY INSURANCE TRUST FUNDS," 23 March 2004: 59. Technical Panel on Assumptions and Methods (2003), Report to the Social Security Advisory Board. Washington, D.C., October 2003. ==== Let's try to stay on point here. It's not in crisis.

I think the funny part of your post is that you admitted you actually watched Richard Jeni.

Actually no. I wasn't talking about an OLD column by George Will I was refering to a CURRENT column by the same George Will : http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5195164.html I'm surprised you even realized it was an insult actually so I have to tip my hat to you for at least realizing it. My point is consistent and is EXACTLY the same as George Will's. There is no need to lie about something in order to gain the support of the American people. Calling this a crisis is lying and is muddying the debate and mark my words, his plan to destroy SS is going to at best be to him what health care reform was to Clinton : It will grind his Presidency to a halt. At worst it will get passed and it will be the end of the Republican Party, the greatest political party there is and it will all be becuase of greed being pushed upon the American taxpayer by "genius" people like yourself that want tso much to believe you know what you're talking about but the only people that truly believe that are people that even have less understanding of this than you. Like I said, you are a liar or moron or both. Considering you're arguments I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and just say you're an idiot who doesn't even get that you're lying and never will. I guess me and George Will "Republicans" will just have to realize that the hero of a sports message board knows better than we do!!

If we get a 2nd we should package both for a 1st.

Add staunch Republican George Will to your list of "fear mongerers" : The president says Social Security should be reformed because it is in "crisis." That is an exaggeration.(...) What constitutes a crisis is a matter of opinion, and everyone is entitled to his or her own. But not to his or her own facts. Here are some: Social Security outlays may exceed revenues by 2018 -- that date almost certainly will recede further into the future, as it has before, as the economy outperforms expectations. After that, the government bonds that Social Security surpluses have bought (funds used to fund the government) will be entirely redeemed, as the Social Security Administration calculates, by 2042. Or 2052, according to the Congressional Budget Office, using different assumptions about the rate of economic growth. That depends partly on the rate of productivity growth: Might a growth rate unusually high by historic standards become normal? Immigration rates will affect the ratio of workers to retirees. Some persons warning of a distant Social Security crisis postulate 75 years of 1.8 percent annual growth. But if America has 75 such sluggish years, Social Security's insolvency will hardly be the nation's largest problem -- and personal retirement accounts will reflect, not compensate for, the stagnation. === Don't take this the wrong way but you are either a liar, a moron, to stubborn or stupid to understand or all all three combined.

"Rep. Phil English, R-Erie, who serves on the House Ways and Means Committee and is a longtime advocate for tax code changes, said he thought there could be considerable support for Thomas' idea of working on Social Security and tax issues at the same time. English said it was important to 'reposition' the debate over the nation's retirement program. "I think Chairman Thomas made an important contribution to the debate by sending a message to the White House that we need to be flexible and bipartisan in how we approach Social Security reform," he said. Thomas "played a very important role in reminding those involved in the debate that there are number of things we can do that will improve the solvency from Social Security, quite apart from the creation of individual accounts," English said. "And he also correctly and directly made it clear that individual accounts by themselves will only marginally improve the performance of the system overall." So let me get this straight. He's saying essentially the same thing that Emanuel is saying? Nice reasoning there.

No the fact that you posted this and it supports my points and destroys yours defines "priceless". Nice work Captain Talking Points.

And when will you get it through your head that it's a badly, badly flawed plan. From a fiscal point of view it's horrendous. It adds to deficits and federal debt in very large numbers until 2060 and the transition costs of Bush's plan for the first 10 years will be at least $2 trillion, and $4.5 trillion for the second 10 years. The exploding deficit will have an adverse effect on interest rates, an adverse effect on consumption and housing prices, reduce productivity and growth, and crowd out debt capital to the private sector. Markets then of course will begin to lose confidence in fiscal policy (Even more so than today -- look at the sliding of the dollar). The soundness of social security will be worse NOT BETTER. The stock market is hardly a sure bet. You are not making social security more secure by subjecting people's retirement to equity risk. If you look at the Nikkei in Japan you get a sense of what can happen. SS is simply a tax that prevents the elderly living in poverty. Its an insurance agianst that. And once agian it IS NOT IN CRISIS. You keep bringing up Newt Gingrich but he just said in a Bloomberg article -- "Even Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House of Representatives and a supporter of private accounts, says, ``The combination of higher birth rates and more immigration makes the United States the healthiest of developed nations. This is not a crisis.'' There are a couple of things you could do to solve the SS problem with out adding TENS OF TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF DEBT. You could increase the retirement age by one year every two decades. For the next 100 years. Or you could just leave it alone since the projections that putit in "crisis" use an anemic 1.8% growth rate which means the economy would essentially have collapsed. If you think tha'ts happening then this is a debate for another time. The other projection from Bush doesn't use the 75 year standard, it dishonestly projects it to infinity. Plus Americans are having more babies. The trend, combined with an annual inflow of immigrants that is more than the rest of the developed world combined, which undercuts the lie behind President George W. Bush's plan to allow private Social Security accounts: that the current system faces an emergency because of a sharp decline in the size of the future U.S. workforce. This is complete bull sh--. Bush has made demographics the centerpiece of his lie for destroying the 70-year-old program. The number of working-age people supporting each retiree is set to fall to 2.1 in 2050 from 4.6 this year so Bush argues that the trend requires immediate action. ``I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act now,'' The Social Security Administration says the U.S. system, which in 2003 gave out $470 billion in benefits to about 15 percent of Americans, will go broke by 2042 as the American workforce dwindles using that anemic 1.8% growth rate. But demographics experts say the long-term numbers are by no means as definite as they sound in the current debate. ``When you start getting to people who are yet to be born, then the uncertainty starts mounting,'' said Joshua Goldstein, a professor at the Office of Population Research at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey. ``You don't realize you're in a baby boom until it's beginning to end.'' The trends in the U.S. are far more favorable than they are in many other countries. The U.S. will have more workers to support retirees than Japan, China or the 25 nations in the European Union. By 2050, Europe's ratio of workers to retirees is set to fall to 0.9 from 3.3 today; Japan's will plunge to 0.3 from 2.3 -- or more than three people over 65 for every working-age person. Driven by the nation's immigrants, the U.S. has the fourth- highest birthrate -- after Turkey, Iceland and Mexico -- among the 30 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of the richest countries. The U.S. is one of six OECD members whose birthrate rose in the last 25 years, and the only one of the six with a fertility level above the line needed to increase population, the United Nations says. The U.S. birthrate is estimated to have increased to 2.11 children per woman in the five-year period ending in 2005 from 1.79 in the five years to 1980, according to the UN. Japan's birthrate is estimated at 1.32 during that period. The European Union's rate was 1.46 in 2002. ``I can't think of any developed country that has a state pension system in better shape than the U.S.,'' says Monika Queisser, administrator of the social policy division of the Paris- based OECD. ``Social Security makes relatively generous payments at low cost. It's solvent until the middle of the century, and can be for much longer with some tweaking. And the U.S. has a growing population.'' Bush's own efforts to promote immigration should actually solve the program's funding gap. Bush, backed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, supports letting at least 8 million illegal immigrants stay in the U.S. if they have a job, in what would be the biggest shakeup of immigration law since 1986. Immigrants accounted for almost half the nation's population growth from 2000 to 2003. Even the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks barely slowed the inflow of people to the U.S. from the record 13.7 million who entered in the 1990s so it's not slowing down at all. This alleged forthcoming crisis will be mild compared to those of other modern countries. From July 2001 to July 2003 the U.S. gained a net 2.6 million people through immigration, according to the Census Bureau. Japan's entire population of foreign nationals is 1.7 million, or 1.3 percent of the population. The U.S. foreign-born population is 33 million, 11 percent of the population. Net immigration to the European Union would have to triple to about 1.4 million people a year to counter the decline in the working-age population, PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLC estimated in a September 2000 report. Immigrants in the short run pay more Social Security taxes than they collect, and they may never collect any. Immigrants also make the population younger and they tend to have higher fertility. Steve Goss, the chief actuary for the Social Security system, says net immigration to the U.S. -- the inflow minus the outflow -- may slow in coming years because some of the people who came during the surge in the 1990s could start to leave. A drop in birthrates in Mexico, the biggest source of immigrants to the U.S., also may reduce immigration, he says. The potential supply of immigrants may not keep up with demand but even then it is only expected to fall from 1.3 million a year to 900,000 by the year 2025. The U.K. took in 116,000 immigrants in 2002, and politicians from both the ruling Labour and the opposition Conservative parties have proposed to curb the traffic of people into the country. The U.K.'s fertility rate fell to about 1.7 children per woman today from as high as 2.9 children in the 1960s. Italy faces one of the worst crises, with about 14 percent of gross domestic product already dedicated to funding pensions compared to 5 percent in the U.S. Italy's population is declining by 139,000 people a year. By contrast, the retirement system in the U.S. will be sound for decades, giving policy makers plenty of time to resolve the issue per the Federal Reserve Governor Edward Gramlich. There could be modest changes made to the system that would eliminate the actuarial deficit per Gramlich in a Jan. 12 interview. Any attempt to create private savings accounts would be too risky for retirees' savings. Simply indexing the Social Security retirement age to life expectancy would erase much of the future shortfall per the chairman of the advisory panel on Social Security. That would entail little more than raising the age about a year every other decade. Falling birthrates aren't just affecting the wealthiest nations. China, the world's most-populous country, India and Brazil are experiencing a drop in fertility levels. China's fertility rate is 1.86 children per woman, down from about six per woman in 1966, according to the UN. By 2050, 30 percent of the population will be over 65, compared to 25.5 percent in the U.S., according to the UN. At current fertility rates, Europe's population is set to fall from 728 million in 2000 to 597 million in 2050, an 18 percent drop, according to UN figures. bloomberg === What you are doing is lying to the poeple on this board and they simply don't have the ability to see through your bull sh-- arguments. Like I said a REAL Republican doesn't have to lie in order to convince the American people to support something. We shold leave that to the Democrats.

The SS trustees tell us that the trust fund will run out of money in 47 years and after that will only be able to pay 80% of benefits. TODAY, outside of Social Security, the federal government only collects enough taxes to pay for 68% of what it spends. So, in 47 years, Social Security will be in better financial condition than the rest of the government. Where's the crisis? By the way, the first person to say SS was in crisis was Reagan....and he opposed privatizing it.

You must consider yourself the funniest 11 year old on your block, huh?

Time Magazine: Crisis is "just not true" Time Magazine headlines: Taking on Social Security Social Security is a long way from bankrupt, despite the President's assertions. Why, then, is Bush taking on America's biggest, most successful social program ever? Good question. TIME's latest poll gives some indication of what Bush faces: 49% of respondents said they disapprove of the President's handling of Social Security, while only 40% said they approve. And that's before Bush has even put forward the details of his plan. Nonetheless, the President has begun his assault—personally and through a cadre of emissaries from Vice President Dick Cheney to Treasury Secretary John Snow—labeling Social Security a "crisis" that must be fixed. "First step," Bush told TIME last month, "is to make sure everybody understands we have a problem." The President last week surrounded himself with citizens ranging from children to an 80-year-old and warned that the Social Security system will be "flat bust, bankrupt" by the time workers in their 20s retire. As early as 2018, Bush said, "you're either going to have to raise the taxes of people or reduce the benefits." At another appearance intended to promote federal standards for testing high school students, Bush went off script to warn a group of teenagers, "The system will be bankrupt by the year 2040." That sounds pretty scary—except that it's not true. What will actually happen in 2018, according to the Social Security trustees who oversee the program, is that the money paid out in benefits will begin to exceed the amount collected in taxes. And since Social Security will run a surplus until then (and has been running one for some time), it has billions available that it can tap to fill the gap. Even under conservative estimates, the system as it stands will have enough money to pay all its promised benefits until 2042 and most of its obligations for decades after. I quote, "It's just not true." NYT Sunday Magazine: Social Security is "not in crisis" Roger Lowenstein in the NYT Sunday Magazine where he points out Social Security, "appears to be solvent or near solvent until the limit of what is humanly forecastable". The campaign is potentially self-fulfilling: persuade enough people that Social Security is going bankrupt, and it will lose public support. Then Congress will be forced to act. And thanks to such unceasing alarums, many, and perhaps most, people today think the program is in serious financial trouble. But is it? After Bush's re-election, I carefully read the 225-page annual report of the Social Security trustees. I also talked to actuaries and economists, inside and outside the agency, who are expert in the peculiar science of long-term Social Security forecasting. The actuarial view is that the system is probably in need of a small adjustment of the sort that Congress has approved in the past. But there is a strong argument, which the agency acknowledges as a possibility, that the system is solvent as is. Although prudence argues for making a fix sooner rather than later, the program is not in crisis, nor is its potential shortfall irresolvable. Ideology aside, the scale of the fixes would not require Social Security to abandon the role that was conceived for it in 1935, and that it still performs today -- as an insurance fail-safe for the aged and others and as a complement to people's private market savings. There is no crisis Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, writes: President Bush has been working hard to promote belief in a Social Security crisis. Unfortunately for him, the numbers refuse to cooperate. The latest numbers from the Social Security trustees show that the program can pay all scheduled benefits through the year 2042 with no changes whatsoever. An independent assessment from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shows that the program can pay all benefits through the year 2052. Even after these dates, the projections from both the trustees and CBO show that the program will always be able to pay a higher benefit than that received by current retirees, although not the full scheduled benefit. Standing together, we have kept Social Security a friend to all Americans for 70 years. Social Security is our friend and we need to watch out for Social Security as Social Security has watched out for us. We have every reason to be confident about the future of Social Security, which is healthy and successful. BUSINESSWEEK: Social Security Crisis? What Crisis? Laura D'Andrea Tyson (Dean of London Business School): Is the Social Security system facing a crisis? President George W. Bush certainly wants us to think so. Indeed, he recently warned that the "crisis is now." After years of repeated warnings by conservative political thinkers, the word crisis has become the mental frame that shapes the way many Americans think about Social Security's future. This lie is the true crisis because the fake "crisis" is being exploited to gut Social Security. To defuse the crisis hype it is useful to begin with a few facts. First, Social Security is a significant source of income for elderly Americans, providing the majority of income for two-thirds of elderly beneficiaries and all of the income for 20% of them. Second, according to the most recent report by the Trustees of Social Security, even under the cautious assumption that the U.S. economy grows at the anemic rate of 1.6% a year, the revenues into Social Security from the current level of payroll taxes will cover promised benefits for another 38 years and will be enough to finance about 70% of benefits through 2078. ROLLING STONE: The Fake Crisis Eric Bates under the headline, The Fake Crisis: To hear George Bush tell it, Social Security is about to go broke. Since his re-election, the president has launched a full-scale campaign to convince the public that the retirement system will run out of money starting in 2018. "The system goes into the red," Bush told reporters on December 20th at a rare press conference. "Many times, legislative bodies will not react unless the crisis is apparent, crisis is upon them. I believe that crisis is." Social Security, he concluded, "can't sustain that which has been promised to the workers." To save Social Security, Bush wants to destroy it -- replacing government-guaranteed retirement benefits with private accounts that will be subject to the whims of the stock market. A "fake crisis" to "destroy" Social Security? Merc: Social Security is not in a Crisis Steven Thomma, reporting for the San Jose Mercery News: Social Security is not in a crisis. Full checks will keep going out for decades, even without changes. The only crisis is a manufactured crisis by the White House. Bush is leading the drumbeat, starting this week with a series of speeches and staged events and building to a prime spot in his upcoming State of the Union Speech. "The crisis is now," he said recently. Yet the facts show no imminent threat to Social Security. Even without a single change, the checks will continue to go out as scheduled at least until 2042, perhaps 2052. Even then, the system could afford to pay 73 percent of benefits. Under one of three projections envisioned by the trustees who run the program, it could even afford to keep paying full benefits and start amassing a big surplus. Instead a shortage in 50 years, there could be a huge surplus? Why are Bush's goals 'crises'? Great Washington Post Article: Warning of the need for urgent action on his Social Security plan, Bush says the "crisis is now" for a system even the most pessimistic observers say will take in more in taxes than it pays out in benefits well into the next decade. So there is no crisis...unless Bush manufactures a crisis: In a Dec. 20 news conference, the president explained. "Many times, legislative bodies will not react unless the crisis is apparent, crisis is upon them," Bush said, discussing Social Security. "And so for a period of time, we're going to have to explain to members of Congress that crisis is here." Public Doesn't See a Crisis ABC News Poll (PDF): CRISIS? – As noted, the administration also faces a challenge in simply getting the public to share its sense of urgency about Social Security. Bush declared last week, “The crisis is now.” In this poll, however, just 25 percent say Social Security is in crisis, actually down from 34 percent in an ABC/Post poll in 1998. === Not sure why this Democrat's answer is your justification for lying to peope in order to push the largest debt accumulation onto the backs of future generations but it's sad to say the least. SS is a tax that prevent the elederly from living in poverty and destroying SS adds to the deficit more than just leaving it as is. As a REAL Republican and a Christian I won't be able to agree with you BS argument to do so because it means massive debt accumulation and lying in order to do it.

Philadelphia -- Swarming defense Pittsburgh -- Power running game Atlanta -- QB who opens up the field due to his threat to run New England -- Accurate passing, effiecient offense, smart defense Of course the QB position is what I hope it to be but it really looks like JP is going make the offense even more lethal. Still hoping we spend our money on OL and TE and draft CB and DL.

So you're comparing death squads to dropping two nuclear bombs on two cities? Brilliant.

It's not that I hate George Bush it's that I hate people like him and yourself that are dishonest and believe that blatantly lying to people is okay. Example -- "In addition to making deceptive claims about the system going broke, Bush continued to perpetuate a myth about life expectancy so misleading that the Social Security Administration's own Web site goes to great pains to explain how wrong it is. Said Bush: "The problem is, is that times have changed since 1935. Then most women did not work outside the house, and the average life expectancy was about 60 years old, which for a guy 58 years old must have been a little discouraging. (LAUGHTER) "Today, Americans, fortunately, are living longer and longer. I mean, we're living way beyond 60 years old and most women are working outside the house." In fact, as the Social Security Web site states: "If we look at life expectancy statistics from the 1930s we might naturally come to the conclusion that the Social Security program was designed in such a way that people would work for many years paying in taxes, but would not live long enough to collect benefits. Life expectancy at birth in 1930 was indeed only 58 for men and 62 for women. But life expectancy at birth in the early decades of the 20th century was low due to high infant mortality, and someone who died as a child would never have worked and paid into Social Security. A more appropriate measure is probably life expectancy after attainment of adulthood." Its from today's Washington Post.

If you knew anything at all (and I mean ANYTHING) about the Republican Party you would know that we aren't against raising taxes. Reagan was responsible for THE LARGEST TAX INCREASE IN US HISTORY. He raised taxes 5 different times between 80-88. Like I said I'm a Reagan Republican not a Bush Republican.

Not at all, I'm just pointing out that SS is not investment its insurance. Actually that is a sign that you are not the genius put yourself forth as. I'm understanding everytihng you are saying and dismantling while you just skip over the questions that I pose to you once your points are shown as either incorrect or flawed. You just move on to a different long-winded point. Buying into social security isn't something we do in order to accumulate wealth. As with the purchase of an annuity, it is a system for assuring ourselves a minimum standard of living in our old age. Having that minimum standard of living protected is what in turn enables us to take the entreprenurial risk which creates wealth. When the consequences of failure are starvation, risk is not affordable, but when the consequences of failure are living modestly, we can afford to pour our savings into starting a new enterprise. The second thing to note here is that while we have fewer workers per retiree, we also have fewer children per worker. As a result, the number of dependants that each worker supports hasn't changed nearly so much as the worker to retiree ratio. In addition, we will have these retirees, and need to support them, irrespective of whether we have social security. Are we really willing to force our parents to live on cat food? That's okay. Wrong is still "W r o n g" no matter how slow you type it. Actually, if you look at the Trustees' Report, we'll be able to pay 80% or more of the promised benefits without raising taxes. This suggests that a tax increase equal to about 1.2% of GDP would be sufficient to solve the problem forever. http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR04/IV_LRest.html#wp220056 http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR04/IV_LRest.html#wp267528 You have to pay for a subscriptin to access the aritcle I reference on the disaster that is England but it is from the WSJ dated August 10, 1998 and the title is "Britain's Social Security Debacle". It's a pretty detailed analysis. It begins by saying -- "LONDON -- Anyone suggesting Americans should get a say in how their Social Security contributions are invested might look at the British system. A little scrutiny might help avert a big disaster. I'll give you some specifics on each systems failure - BRITAIN : For all the fanfare that surrounds the Bush administration’s efforts to present a bold new idea on pension reform, the truth is that it is not new at all. In fact, the proposal first term in 1979 and which has since led Britain to the brink of a crisis. Since then, the nation’s basic pension, which is paid for out of tax receipts, has shrunk dramatically. The United Kingdom has the stingiest state pension program of any G8 nation, and there is growing consensus -- even among British conservatives -- that reform is needed. And ironically enough, considering that America is on the verge of copying Britain’s mistake, most experts seek reform in the direction of a more generous, and simpler, basic state pension -- one similar in design, in other words, to America’s Social Security program. ... Britain’s experiment with substituting private savings accounts for a portion of state beneits has been a failure. A shorthand explanation for what has gone wrong is that the costs and risks of running private investment accounts outweigh the value of the returns they are likely to earn. On average, fees and charges can reduce pension lump sums by up to 30 percent on retirement. The nation’s savings industry, which sells those private accounts, has already acknowledged this. Which brings us to irony No. 2: Just as the United States prepares to funnel untold billions to its private sector for the management of private accounts, back in 2002, many U.K. insurance companies, mindful of tough new rules against giving bad advice, began to write to their customers urging them to consider abandoning their private savings and returning to the state pension system -- something hundreds of thousands of Britons have done already." Today, another financial scandal looms, and this one could be bigger. It involves the United Kingdom’s occupational schemes, long the backbone of retirement provision (they are the British equivalent of traditional U.S. pension plans). The drop in real interest rates and the accompanying disappearance in high returns on equities have left most British occupational pension schemes in deficit. Employers sponsoring some 70 percent of all defined-benefit plans -- in which the retirement pay is a percentage of the final salary -- have shut their doors to new members. Instead, as with American 401(k) plans, employers are offering defined-contribution plans in which company contributions, per worker, are very much lower than those of the schemes they replace. They’re unlikely to ever deliver anything like the old-style retirement benefits. What has made this abandonment particularly acute is that the United Kingdom was so confident of the strength of its occupational plans that Tory and Labour governments alike insisted that no insurance scheme would be necessary. But the crisis within the occupational pension system has laid bare just how inadequate Britain’s public pension schemes have been. Now, some 65,000 British workers have lost all or part of their pensions as a wave of insolvent employers are discovered to have left their pension schemes severely underfunded. Some do not even have the cash to pay the GMPs that were promised in exchange for tax rebates. A 1995 attempt at reform fizzled. Those who have lost out have discovered that they have nothing to fall back on except the basic state pension, which is now so miserly because of changes put in place during the first year of the Thatcher reign that those relying solely upon it for their retirement income are defined as destitute. And that GMP, which was meant to supplement the basic state pension? “The Guaranteed Minimum Pension turned out to be neither guaranteed nor a minimum,” says Ros Altmann of the London School of Economics. “These people would have been better off keeping their money under the mattress.” This, then, is the situation in Britain today: - According to the Department for Work and Pensions, in 2004 alone, 500,000 people abandoned private pensions and moved back into the state system. Government actuaries expect another 250,000 to contract back in this year. - In 2004, the Association of British Insurers, the trade association representing the companies that sell the private accounts, made a collective decision not to risk any more allegations of mis-selling. It urged all of its member firms to warn those who had taken tax rebates to open private accounts that they might have made a bad choice. The advice was particularly aimed at older workers with fewer years until retirement. - Many insurance companies -- the sellers of the private accounts -- have been writing their customers urging them to contract back in to the state system. - And, of course, even the U.K. version of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has endorsed the idea of raising taxes to increase benefit levels. This is why it is dishonest as Republicans to continue lying to the American people as you continue to do. A REAL Republican does not need to lie in order to accomplish our goals of reform. People like you do not point to Argentina's recent attempt, which probably was the two ton brick on the camel's back which destroyed their economy. You do tend to praise Chile for some reason, even though that was also a disaster financially, simply because it briefly appeared to be better than the state-run system which had been looted by a corrupt government. It is weird to me that people like you frequently praise Sweden's system, even though so far it too has not gone very well, though they usually fail to point out that the total payroll tax there is 18.5%, over 6 percentage points higher than the equivalent tax here. Failure after failure after failure. Not at all. What Ii'm saying is that it's not broken so don't LIE in order to destroy it. Like I said before if this happens my party is in real trouble for a generation and we won't be able to blame it's failure on the Democrats because they are opposed to it. Since you missed the differences in those models They use differnet levels of growth.